RURAL EVANGELISM 



JAMES ELVIN WAGNER 
B V 3790 | 

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Book ,WO, 

Copyright i\'° 



COKKRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Rural Evangelism 



BY 

JAMES ELVIN WAGNER 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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Copyright, 1920, by 
JAMES ELVIN WAGNER 



§>CU604298 



20 i920 



72 



DEDICATION 

TO MT MOTHER 

ANNIE JOSEPHINE WAGNER 

WHO FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS POURED HER SOUL INTO MINE 

THAT FOR THE THIRTY YEARS SINCE HER DEATH* 

MY WORK MIGHT IN LARGE MEASURE BE HERS 

THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED 



Issued for 

The Department of Evangelism 

Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 

Methodist Episcopal Church 



CONTENTS 

Chapteb PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Foreword ; 9 

I . What is Evangelism? 13 

II. Every Pastor an Evangelist 32 

HE . The Evangelistic Message 55 

IV. The Revival Meeting 71 

V. Personal Evangelism 85 

VI. Pastoral Calling and Evangelism 104 

VII . An Evangelistic Program 127 

VIII . Child Evangelism 147 

IX . Conservation 166 



INTRODUCTION 

The need of evangelism in the local church 
that is participated in by the membership in 
general is to-day most insistent. And espe- 
cially is this true in rural communities where 
pastors, in many instances, are obliged to min- 
ister to more than one community. 

It is encouraging, therefore, to see coming 
from the press a book on Rural Evangelism 
such as Dr. James Elvin Wagner has here 
written. Its simple, straightforward presenta- 
tion of practical methods of leading a church to 
active participation in the task of winning 
others to the fellowship with Jesus Christ and 
service for him is so absolutely free from any 
academic flavor that it will be a positive force 
in the ministry of every pastor of a rural com- 
munity who is fortunate enough to come in 
contact with its message. 

Like all great messages, this one on Rural 
Evangelism grows out of the developing per- 
sonal experience and practice of the man deliv- 
ering it. He knows whereof he speaks, and 
those who rejoice in a knowledge of the kingdom 
of God because of his ministry are many. 

As a help in the efforts which the Depart- 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

ment of Evangelism of the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church is making to bring the 
best in the field of evangelistic literature and 
method to the attention of pastors throughout 
the church, this volume from the life of a rural 
pastor is most welcome. And it is recom- 
mended enthusiastically for reading and study 
by the host of Methodist Episcopal pastors who 
are laboring heroically to make the rural com- 
munities of the land veritable garden spots of 
God. 

The nation is looking to the Church of Jesus 
Christ as never before to fulfill its mission in 
making Christian every activity of life, in fur- 
nishing moral and spiritual stamina and vision 
for the youth of the land, and in giving mature 
life that poise of Christian experience which 
makes possible years of useful service. 

To render the aid necessary to make this pos- 
sible is the purpose of every Methodist Episco- 
pal church. This little book will help every 
pastor to fulfill this purpose. 

George B. Dean, 

Superintendent, Department of Evangelism, 
Board of Home Missions and Church Ex- 
tension of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 



FOREWORD 

The following chapters are lectures deliv- 
ered before the students of twelve colleges and 
theological seminaries, and the Summer Schools 
for Rural Pastors held during the summer of 
1919 under the direction of the Department 
of Rural Work of the Board of Home Missions 
and Church Extension of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, as representative of the Depart- 
ment of Evangelism of the Board. 

It was found that while the lectures had 
been carefully prepared and written, contact 
with rural pastors in the Summer Schools sug- 
gested some modifications. These have been 
incorporated in the text as here presented. 
The direct conversational style used when first 
delivered has been preserved in order that the 
group intimacy may prevail in class room use 
of the lectures. 

In preparing these lectures I have used my 
heritage of having been born in the country 
and having served as pastor of rural charges 
for fifteen years. I also have drawn on my 
extensive reading on the subject and thorough 



10 FOREWORD 

discussion with Dr. George B. Dean, Superin- 
tendent of the Department of Evangelism of 
the Board of Home Missions and Church Ex- 
tension of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

In presenting plans — and I have tried to 
do only that — I have confined myself to such 
as have been approved by successful experience. 
They are equally applicable to the country 
circuit and to the larger town or city charge. 
I do not make this statement hesitatingly, 
but with the assurance which actual testing in 
both country and city churches has given me. 
I began using the Unit or Group plan for 
evangelistic and other ends years ago, and 
have no fear in presenting it with the sugges- 
tions here set forth. 

If the limits of this booklet permitted, three 
additional chapters, or lectures, should be in- 
cluded. The first would be on "The Church 
Hymnal and the Evangelistic Campaign, " the 
second on "A Preaching Program," and the 
third on "Dangers of Professionalism." For 
lack of room I have given a little space to each 
subject in other lectures. 

It is with feelings of deepest humility, and 
with many misgivings that I commit these 
pages to the public. I should not do it but 



FOREWORD 11 

for the insistence of some in authority who 
believe they are needed. May their judgment 
be better than mine! 

I make grateful acknowledgment to all who 
have given friendly criticism of the lectures as 
they were delivered; to the rural pastors who 
constituted the student body of the Summer 
Schools, for their courteous attention and 
kindly reception of my suggestions; to Mr. 
Ralph A. Felton, who, under the direction of 
Dr. Paul L. Vogt, Superintendent of the De- 
partment of Rural Work of the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, has been directly 
in charge of the Summer Schools for Rural 
Pastors, for suggesting their further usefulness; 
to the Rev. Harold E. Wilson, of the Bureau 
of Publicity, for complete revision of the man- 
uscript; and, finally, to the Rev. George B. 
Dean, D.D., Superintendent of the Department 
of Evangelism of the Board of Home Missions 
and Church Extension, for friendly counsel and 
criticism in the original preparation of the 
lectures from which these pages have grown. 
James Elvin Wagner. 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS EVANGELISM? 

An old English Grammar in defining "word" 
said, "A word is the sign of an idea." Very 
true; but how inconvenient it is that the same 
word does not uniformly connote the same 
idea to each of us! Previous experience, en- 
vironment, age, occupation, training, have 
their influence upon the idea which any par- 
ticular word will convey. So simple and 
familiar a word as "love" depends for its 
meaning upon the age, the experience, and the 
character of life previously led by the one 
using or hearing it. To the child it will mean 
something very different from what it suggests 
to the "maid in love"; and something more 
different still to a young mother holding her 
own first babe in her arms; while its richest 
meaning belongs to an old couple who have 
reared their children, seen them mated for 
life, have dandled their grandchildren on their 
knees, have worshiped God throughout life, 
and now in the twilight face the setting sun 

13 



14 RURAL EVANGELISM 

together, and wait the summons to "come up 
higher/ 5 Love will convey different ideas and 
emotions to a clean-minded, clean-living man 
and to a voluptuary. 

Evangelism is our subject. What does the 
term signify to your consciousness? Were you 
converted in a "gracious revival meeting" where 
the people sang with unction and the minister 
preached with power, and a strange spell was 
upon the multitude? Then examine your con- 
sciousness and see if you have not thought of 
that kind of a meeting when you have heard 
the term "evangelism." And, equally, if you 
were converted in a Sunday school class, where 
there were restless boys and girls, but a teacher 
who knew God and helped you to find him; 
or if you had a wise mother who brought you 
early to choose God as your God, you have 
probably thought of those experiences. They 
are definitely associated in your mind with 
the term "evangelism." 

To get anywhere in these lectures we must 
each have the same concept when the term 
"evangelism" is used. It is important that as 
ministers we should understand terms alike; it 
is even more important that our lay hearers 
understand as we do the terms we use. What 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 15 

do we mean, then, by the term "evangelism,' 5 
and what do laymen generally understand us 
to mean? 

I wonder if something like the following has 
not happened in many charges: It is six weeks 
since a Fall Conference adjourned when Brother 
Bundy was appointed to Rockwell charge. He 
was on duty and made a splendid impression 
the first Sunday after Conference, and by his 
pulpit work and visitation among the people 
since then has deepened that good impression, 
and his people are ready to follow his leader- 
ship. Thanksgiving time has arrived, and 
January with the revival meeting is only five 
weeks away. Rockwell is a splendid country 
village of a thousand population, in the midst 
of a thickly settled and very rich farming 
community, and the membership of Brother 
Bundy's church is the cream of the village and 
community around. It is Monday morning 
before Thanksgiving, and walking to the post 
office the new minister meets his leading mem- 
ber, a splendid farmer living in the finest home 
in the county. They stop for friendly greeting 
and after some conversation the minister says: 
"Fm glad we met this morning, Brother 
Shanks. I was intending to go out to see you. 



16 RURAL EVANGELISM 

You know January will soon be here, and I 
was wondering what we ought to do about our 
evangelistic campaign this year. What ought 
we to do?" 

Many things can pass through an alert mind 
in a brief moment, and Brother Shanks has 
such a mind. What is his mental reaction to 
the term "evangelistic"? Does he first think, 
"A revival! And I raised my subscription so 
much this year that I have nothing in reserve. 
Wonder what it will cost me"? 

Now, this good man is not stingy. He be- 
lieves in giving liberally to every good cause. 
And there is no harm in the fact that revivals 
cost money. The danger lies in the fact that 
Brother Shanks thinks "money" when evan- 
gelism is mentioned. 

We must manage some way to use that 
term, or another as good, without making 
Brother Shanks think first of dollars. 

At that moment something like this may go 
through Brother Shanks's mind: "You have 
begun mighty well, Pastor; preached sane and 
real gospel sermons, and I like you; we all 
like you. I wonder if, when you get into re- 
vival meetings, you will begin giving us a lot 
of sensational slush and rubbish? I hope not, 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 17 

but it makes me uneasy to think about it. 
Wonder why so many ministers preach so 
differently in a revival than at any other time. 
I simply can't stand teary stories, graveyard 
horrors, and such efforts to get the people 
worked up. Brother Bundy, I hope you can 
preach revival sermons that have meat in 
them." 

There are reasons for the average layman 
thinking such thoughts. I have known pastors 
who did not really prepare their sermons until 
the revival meeting arrived, and then they 
quit thinking, quit sermon building, and began 
simply "boring for tears," or trying to awaken 
unusual sensations. Some evangelists cannot 
get into their stride until they find "something 
rotten in Denmark," and then they appear to 
be perfectly happy, forgetting that they are 
making many sore spots, and work of healing 
for pastors to do after they have had their 
little day of glory and are gone. So often the 
"something rotten in Denmark" has to be 
manufactured, or exaggerated, to gain the 
point. No wonder Brother Shanks hopes his 
pastor is not a sensationalist. Something must 
be done to prevent him from having such 
thoughts when evangelism is mentioned. 



18 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Then, flashing on the heels of the fear of 
sensationalism, there comes a memory to 
Brother Shanks. It is not so much a thought 
which can be put into words as a vision of 
what once happened. There had been a 
revival in his church, an enthusiastic evangel- 
ist who liked to make a big showing had been 
in charge. Everyone who had held up his 
hand, or could be coaxed down to the front 
of the tabernacle on any sort of proposition, 
had been compelled — no other word will do — 
to sign a card with a confession on it, and a 
place for the name, address and church pre- 
ferred. These cards had been jealously kept, 
and finally had been divided among the pas- 
tors, but not until the evangelist had stated 
with great unction that the meeting had been 
a glorious success; the church had been awak- 
ened, souls had been saved, and the Lord had 
been greatly honored. Then he took up the 
cards, arranged in a number of neat stacks, 
with a rubber band around each stack, and 
distributed them among the pastors, taking 
care not to say how many any particular 
pastor received, lest there be hurt feelings, but 
stating the total number of converts had 
been five hundred and fifty. A magnificent 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 19 

work! Brother Shanks, at the time, had 
wondered how many of those converts were 
from the Sunday school, brought in by faith- 
ful teachers; but he had not thought that 
cards signed by such faithful church members 
as himself, when urged to go forward to help 
others, would be counted. He had also been 
thankful for so many converts, and had felt 
sure his own church would be strengthened by 
the revival. He was glad, moreover, to do his 
part in the collection, although it helped in- 
evitably to lay a foundation for future thoughts 
about dollars when his pastor should ask about 
the evangelistic campaign 

After the evangelist had gone, they went 
over their cards. There were, for his church, 
fifty cards signed by children of the Sunday 
school, every one of whom would have been 
brought into the church that very season by 
the regular Decision Day service. Seventy-five 
were signed by the most faithful members of the 
church; twenty by newly arrived people who 
had their church letters and would soon have 
joined anyway; and twelve by supposedly 
genuine converts, They had then gone about 
finding those twelve. The first one they called 
on laughed at them. He said: "Why, I don't 



20 RURAL EVANGELISM 

want to join any church. I just wanted to 
shake hands with 'Henry/ and when I went 
down the sawdust trail to shake hands with 
him, they put that card under my nose and 
wouldn't let me go till I signed it. I put down 
'Methodist 5 because my mother was a Method- 
ist; but I'm not going to join any church" — 
and that ended the matter. 

Out of the twelve, they secured • five new 
members, and held them fairly well. Brother 
Shanks had wondered at the time why, if he 
and his pastor and a few more earnest Christian 
people had gone about it faithfully, they could 
not have done as well, or better, without the 
revival; and now he is fearful that Brother 
Bundy also may be a "nose counter," or that 
he may get that kind of an evangelist. We 
must divorce evangelism and "padded returns." 

And, just here, Brother Shanks glances in- 
quiringly at his pastor again. This time it 
has flashed through his mind, in a fraction of 
a second, that this pastor, or the evangelist he 
secures may take the bits in his teeth and run 
the meeting after some cast-iron method suited 
to himself but not to the community. Brother 
Bundy, or his evangelistic helper, may take 
the attitude of "I am it! Do as I say; work 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 21 

as I direct; or cause the damnation of your 
neighbors and children/ 5 He is quite sure, in 
his own mind, that the day when great evan- 
gelistic results can be attained by the efforts 
of one man, or through the counsels of one 
man, is past. He believes that in order to 
achieve best results every member of the church 
must be engaged in the work, and that only 
as they are urged to work in their own way 
can they all be enlisted in the task. The 
people must feel responsible, with the pastor, 
for the work of evangelism. 

Following this last thought, an expression of 
pain passes over Brother Shanks' strong face. 
He is wondering something like this: "Pastor, 
I have not heard anything to suggest it in 
your sermons, but in revivals you can never 
tell what ministers will do. You have not 
brought out any sort of hobby as yet, but I 
wonder if, in a revival, you will trot one out, 
or if you will get an evangelist who will ride 
one into town and out again/ 5 The average 
layman is almost compelled to think of this, 
because so many ministers and evangelists who 
really do keep their hobbies pretty well in 
hand at other times let them loose during the 
revival meeting. 



22 RURAL EVANGELISM 

I know a pastor, as sane usually as the aver- 
age, always devoted and sincere, who, under 
the strain and fervor of revival preaching, 
could see nothing of importance except damna- 
tion through the dance. Dancing is no worse 
during the revival than at other times, but 
the preacher often becomes possessed during 
that period with the feeling that all young 
people are going to hell by that route, and he 
effectually drives them away from his services, 
not because they object to his condemning the 
dance so much as that he emphasizes that evil 
to the exclusion of all others and seems to 
imply that they are all committing that par- 
ticular sin. The average layman may not 
approve of dancing, but he is absolutely shy 
of a minister, any minister with a hobby. 

There are two particularly dangerous hob- 
bies which are likely to be trotted out in a 
revival meeting. The first is the "second- 
blessing-holiness-hobby." Many men who in 
a sane way preach perfect love, sanctification, 
holiness, throughout the year, at revival meet- 
ing time will begin explaining the mystery of 
sanctification, and urging faith in their par- 
ticular theory of it, until they have about 
them a small company of souls as possessed as 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 23 

themselves with the idea that they know all 
the mystery of godliness. 

I believe in holiness as sincerely as any man. 
In my mind there is not the slightest doubt 
that when one of the Lord's children comes to 
him with all his redeemed powers and all his 
possessions, and presents them upon his altar 
for service, something wonderful and beyond 
description happens to him. God takes him 
at his word; he becomes his Lord's for service. 
We need not less, but more preaching on con- 
secration; not less, but more preaching on the 
life of ''perfect love." But when a mere mortal 
man begins telling all the details of what hap- 
pens in a believing and consecrated soul, using 
such terms as "old Adam," "carnal nature," 
"inbred sin," "eradication," and meaning, by 
"sanctification," that the roots of sin have 
been removed after a given method, I feel like 
rising to ask a question or two. How can a 
man who cannot tell how a flower gets its 
perfume, how our nostrils sense the perfume; 
how the flower gets its color, or we see it; 
how we digest food; think, feel, walk; under- 
stand what gravity is, or light, or life, dare 
attempt to tell what God does in a soul when 
he accepts it as an offering and equips it for 



24 RURAL EVANGELISM 

glorious service? Not the hobbyized doctrine 
of sanctification, but the indisputable fact of 
the power of a life rightly related to God 
needs to be preached. 

The second hobby so apt to be trotted out 
just now is that of the immediate second ap- 
pearing of our Lord. War and rumors of war, 
unrest, strife, and fears in men's hearts always 
bring forward this doctrine. Always a few 
give heed to it and watch for a particular kind 
of immediate appearing of Christ, while any 
terrible happening or event out of the ordinary 
brings a swarm of teachers and believers in 
such an appearance. Just now the country is 
full of this teaching and preaching. Every one 
of us is thinking about it more or less, and 
we ought to do so. But who knows enough 
about it to begin riding it as a hobby? No 
one knows either the manner or the time of 
his coming. Christ even said that such things 
were shut up with the Father. It ought not 
to be of nearly so much importance when he 
will appear, or how he will appear, as in what 
state of mind and heart we shall live and 
await his coming. Some way, some time, 
the day of reckoning will come, and he will 
be at hand. If we have lived according to 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 25 

his teaching, we shall be ready when he 
comes. 

The Scriptures afford one theme upon which 
one may preach forever and never become a 
hobbyist. Christ and his apostles and all 
great leaders have preached that sin is ruin, 
and that deliverance from sin can be had only 
through Jesus Christ. That is theme enough, 
and it needs to be testified and declared with 
all that it involves as an experience of life 
rather than explained as a philosophy. It is 
not an explanation of the gospel that saves, 
but acceptance of it as a fact. 

It has taken but a moment for all this to 
flash through Brother Shanks's mind, and now 
he is ready to reply to his pastor's question. 
"Why, Brother Bundy, I want to follow your 
leadership, and I think all our people do. Get 
your plans laid and we will meet you on them. 
Don't think you must plan to do as we have 
always done. Just go at it in your own way, 
and count on us to fall in line." 

These good and sincere men separate, each 
going his own way and each thinking his own 
thoughts. Does "evangelistic" mean the same 
thing to each of them? Interpreted in terms 
of method, Brother Shanks is anxious, a bit 



26 RURAL EVANGELISM 

fearful, but courageous enough to go forward 
in spite of his past and painful experiences; 
while the pastor is perplexed only as to what 
method will probably bring the best results. 
Interpreted in terms of results, each of them 
probably desires that the present membership 
of the church shall be stirred to action, and 
that the unsaved shall be brought into Chris- 
tian fellowship. Brother Bundy thinks of the 
considerable number of his church members 
who are only nominal in their membership, 
who attend church when they feel like it, who 
are at prayer meeting not at all, and who can 
be depended upon for nothing except a trifling 
financial contribution, and wonders if evangelism 
has a mission to them, and what method will 
reach them. With a village and community 
population of some three thousand souls, of 
whom not more than seven hundred belong to 
any church, or make any public confession of 
faith, and where very few of the other twenty- 
three hundred ever attend public worship, what 
shall he do to bring the larger group to a con- 
sciousness of the claims of religion upon them? 
For him the great problem of evangelism is one of 
method. For each of us, when we have reached 
a definite decision as to the kind of product 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 27 

we hope the evangelistic mill will grind out, 
the problem of building the mill and of making 
it deliver the desired grist still remains. 

A few months ago Roosevelt and others 
were making hyphenated Americans very un- 
popular simply by calling attention to them. 
There were many loyal and splendid Amer- 
icans of German descent in those days, and 
we have them still, but it is not proper to call 
them German- Americans; they are Americans. 
Many of us just now are growing very tired 
of other hyphenated citizens. It makes very 
little difference what name one writes before 
the hyphen; it is objectionable. For my own 
part Irish-American sounds quite as bad as 
German-American. Not because the Irish are 
objectionable, but because for any one who 
comes to our shores "American" is enough. 
It is quite bad enough, it seems to me, to have 
Democrats and Republicans lying one about 
the other and slandering each other, without 
giving place to members of foreign political 
parties among us. Sinn Feiners may be all 
right in Ireland, but America is no place 
for them or their agents. Let us have no 
hyphen in our American citizenship, political 
party membership, or church membership. 



28 RURAL EVANGELISM 

For we have hyphenated Methodists and 
Baptists and Presbyterians. They are Worldly- 
Methodists, Nominal-Baptists, Backslidden- 
Presbyterians. It may be straining a point 
to place a hyphen in these names, but they 
indicate my meaning. Americanization seeks 
to take the hyphen out of every name, and 
to leave every citizen among us a pure, one- 
hundred-per-cent American. That is an under- 
taking worthy the zeal of the crusaders. But 
if so, what of the work of evangelism? Should 
not its purpose be to take the hyphen out of 
the name of every churchman, every believer 
in the land? That, and more. 

A pastor was conducting Sunday evening 
evangelistic services in an Eastern city. One 
evening he called for seekers, and a fifteen- 
year-old boy, small of stature, unkempt of 
body and clothing, knelt at the altar and was 
beautifully converted. He arose, his face 
shining with the inner light of redeeming love. 
It happened in that church that the "Money- 
bags' ' was also the most spiritually minded 
member, and was always deeply interested in 
the work of evangelism. After the benediction 
this good brother hurried down the aisle to 
the altar and putting one arm around the 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 29 

pastor and the other about the lad, he ex- 
claimed with genuine warmth: "Great, Pastor, 
great! Just think what has happened here! 
God has saved a soul, given himself to this 
lad! Isn't it glorious?" 

"Yes, Brother Count," answered the pastor, 
"but what shall we do to save the lad?" 

"What shall we do to save him? Why, 
Pastor, I don't understand you. We have 
nothing to do with it. God has saved him. 
What do you mean?" 

"Yes, I know. But do you know this lad, 
and his home?" Just here one of the other 
members of the church wanted to speak to 
the lad, and the pastor and Brother Count 
were left alone. 

"You don't know the boy, or his parents, 
but I know \hem all. This boy's father is a 
drunkard and blackguard. His mother is a 
drunkard and worse; she is a woman of the 
street. He has an older brother who is a gen- 
uine tough, and an older sister who is follow- 
ing her mother. When he gets home to-night, 
his father will be just about returning from 
the saloon. Later his mother and sister will 
come in. If they know where he has been 
to-night, and what he has done, they will 



30 RURAL EVANGELISM 

ridicule and maltreat him, and to-morrow will 
put him to doing things no Christian 
should do." 

Brother Count had forgotten the beginning 
of the conversation, and was thinking solely 
of the boy and what to do for him, as he ex- 
claimed, "Why, Pastor, what can we do to 
save the child?" using the very words of the 
pastor to which he had previously objected. 

The pastor took the boy home with him 
that night, and the next day he and Brother 
Count found a good Christian home for him, 
and in due time got him legally placed there. 
Several years went by and the boy had be- 
come a man, and one fine day he entered one 
of the theological seminaries of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church to prepare himself for mis- 
sion work in China. When was the work of 
evangelism done for this lad? At conversion? 
When placed in such an environment that he 
had a decent chance? Did the work of evan- 
gelism end for him at the church altar, or 
did it extend through the act of securing for 
him a Christian home? Probably redeeming 
grace did its work at the church altar; the 
people of the church did their part in bringing 
him to the altar and in securing for him a 



WHAT IS EVANGELISM ? 31 

Christian home; but he will not be finally 
saved until he has "worked out his own sal- 
vation" in faithful service where God shall 
call him. 

Evangelism has to do with getting men 
saved. Laying aside all questions of method, 
to save men is to bring them to a keen personal 
sense of relationship with God, through con- 
version; so to relate them to their environ- 
ment that they shall have opportunity to 
"work out their own salvation," and finally 
to help them to a place for service. The work 
of evangelism is to get men converted; to get 
the social order in which they live converted; 
to get converted men actually employed in the 
effort to save the world. 

This series of lectures is intended, not to 
deal with what conversion is, what a Chris- 
tianized social order is, but with the obligation 
of gospel ministers to bring such things to pass, 
and with methods for accomplishing that end. 



CHAPTER II 
EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 

Using the term in the broad sense suggested 
in the previous chapter, can, ought every 
pastor to be an evangelist? Or, restricting 
the term to mean only getting converts, can 
every pastor be an evangelist? No doubt 
some will be stronger, more effective evangel- 
ists than others, but I unhesitatingly declare 
that every pastor, to justify his right to be 
in the ministry, must be an evangelist, must 
get converts. 

I once heard the pastor of a college church, 
a man of attainments, of great ability and 
mature years, state that he did not know 
whether he had ever directly been the means 
of leading a soul to Christ. He had held 
meetings called revivals, but there had been 
no converts whom he could confidently claim 
as his own. No one had ever told him that 
his preaching or personal effort had brought 
him to Christ. He was not discouraged or 
distressed, but remarked, "I think it is my 

32 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 33 

duty and call to edify the church." I felt at 
the time, though I was but a student in the 
college, that he was losing the most effectual 
means for edifying the church when he failed 
to secure converts. 

Are there various kinds of work for a min- 
ister other than evangelism, so that if he does 
any one of them he justifies his calling? Cer- 
tainly, ministers have other duties than evan- 
gelism, but there is nothing any minister may 
be called upon to do, no number of things, 
however well he may do them, which can 
excuse him from the one great task of soul- 
winning and soul culture. Other things he may 
do, probably must do, but this one thing he 
must surely do. 

There are singing ministers, and may the 
Lord increase their number and power. If 
through song they win men to Christ, they 
do well. They may do well as leaders of 
community singing, as stimulators of congrega- 
tional singing, or good anthem singing, but 
they must not forget the real object of their 
being pastors. One privilege of every pastor 
is to know and appreciate the church hymnal. 
Any pastor who possesses a voice, whose ear 
is not too dull to harmonies, ought to sing, 



34 RURAL EVANGELISM 

and see to it that the hymnal is used correctly. 
The little red-backed book, the compilation 
of some ambitious leader of revival meeting 
hymnology, may have a mission, but it has 
no place or right in the worship of a Methodist 
Episcopal church. There is no better collec- 
tion of hymns and tunes than the Methodist 
Hymnal, no more usable one, no more appro- 
priate one for church worship, prayer meeting, 
revival meeting, or Sunday school. Some one 
said the other day, "Not one tune in twenty 
in the Hymnal is singable." That is a rash 
statement. There are but five hundred and 
sixty tunes in the Hymnal, several of them 
being used more than once. Then if only one 
tune in twenty is singable, there are but twenty- 
six singable tunes in the entire collection. 
Altogether aside from the splendid body of 
theology, worship, prayer, confession and in- 
spiration contained in the written words of 
the hymns, any lover of music for its own 
sake can find at least two hundred and fifty 
splendid singable tunes in this collection and 
the remaining hymns will compare favorably 
with the best to be found in the average little 
red-backed song book. Real hymn tunes, like 
the best Scripture texts, require and repay 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 35 

study. The trouble with most churches which 
find difficulty in using the Methodist Hymnal 
is that they do not use it correctly. They sing 
the hymns according to custom, with no 
attention to time or accent. If there were 
more singing ministers who had the grace and 
good sense to insist that the Hymnal be used 
correctly, the churches now using something 
else would soon find that the Hymnal, next 
to the Bible, is the best book of worship writ- 
ten, and that its collection of tunes is not 
excelled anywhere. But even such splendid 
work as that cannot justify any minister in 
neglecting or failing to win converts. 

Some ministers are "glad-handers," "jol- 
liers," and may the Lord increase their number, 
provided they also are evangelists. To be a 
real "mixer" means that one has a winsome 
personality and is human. These are assets, 
as much the gift of God as the power to sing; 
and they are usable in the great work of evan- 
gelism. But the minister who simply "glad- 
hands" the people, who makes that an end, 
and counts his work successful when he knows 
everybody, and when the people call him by 
his first name, but stops short of soul-winning, 
is a failure, no matter to how many lodges he 



36 RURAL EVANGELISM 

belongs, or how many special addresses and 
sermons he is asked to preach. No one has 
a better opportunity to be a real evangelist 
than the man who finds it easy to meet people, 
likes to mix with the crowd, and is welcomed 
by the crowd. He has an advantage over his 
less fortunate brother pastors which only adds 
to his responsibilities. Let him use his gifts 
as God ordained he should, and not as a means 
for attracting a personal following, or securing 
some added reputation or glory for himself. 
He must be an evangelist. 

Some men are, by nature, optimists, while 
others are as naturally pessimists. Each needs 
to cultivate the faculty of seeing things as 
they are. One turns a telescope one way and 
the other turns it the other way; but neither 
sees things as they are. One will win in a 
sharp, short pastorate, while the other will 
probably never win any real success. But 
even these handicaps cannot, do not excuse 
any pastor from being a soul-winner. 

What a blessing to the church and to the 
ministry are those pastors whom we call 
organizers! Some of them overdo it. Some 
of them effect such organization as no other 
man could run, and they so soon exhaust them- 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 37 

selves attempting to run it that they must 
move on. But the sane, steady organizer is 
a blessing to the church. Not every man 
has that gift, and those who do not have it 
are handicapped and dependent upon others 
for such tasks. But there is a danger which 
organizers must avoid: they must not lose 
sight of the object to be attained by organiza- 
tion. Organization is not an end in itself; 
it is a means to an end. A machinist who 
would gather wheels, journals, belts, cogs and 
shafts and build them into a mighty structure., 
connect it with power, start it in motion, 
listen to the smooth hum of the moving mass, 
stand back with pride and shout, "See what 
I have built," when his machine could grind 
no grist, produce no product but motion,, 
would be called a crank, or worse, a fooL 
An organization is not a success merely be- 
cause it moves. It succeeds or fails accord- 
ing to the kind of product it produces, both 
as to its quality and quantity. Let us have 
more organizers among us, but let us not 
forget that to justify pride in it, the organ- 
ization must result in winning and training 
souls for Christ and the church. 

Can success as a financier justify a minister's, 



38 RURAL EVANGELISM 

continuance in the pastorate, unless he also 
is an evangelist? No doubt we need his pe- 
culiar kind of work. Churches must be built, 
community houses, parsonages and other enter- 
prises must be put through, benevolences 
raised, pastoral support brought to a more 
satisfactory level, and all this the financier 
does. Some pastors always leave a charge 
in splendid financial condition — bills paid, 
property in fine repair, benevolences advanced, 
and the pastor's salary increased, all of which 
counts tremendously. But all this is as sound- 
ing brass or a tinkling cymbal unless souls are 
won for Christ and the church. 

Finally, there is the mighty pulpiteer, the 
great preacher. Among us he is as a sort of 
prince. Rounded sentences, chaste diction, 
penetrating vision, brilliant imagination, unre- 
mitting labor, a musical voice, marshaled by 
a confident will, make him irresistible as a 
preacher. May the Lord increase his number, 
provided he aims his mighty cannon at the 
right target. It is an indisputable fact that 
some great pulpiteers are woeful failures as 
evangelists. They need not be failures at this 
point; they ought to win. If they will use 
their gifts humbly and for the end preaching 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 39 

is meant to accomplish, they will win. One 
penitent at the altar after the sermon is higher 
compliment for the preacher and his sermon 
than a multitude pressing forward to compli- 
ment him with honeyed words. The first 
justifies preaching; the second is food for 
vanity. 

I trust we are agreed, brothers, that what- 
ever else a minister may do, and do well, to 
justify his being a pastor he must be an evan- 
gelist. There are pastors who are weak as 
revivalists. They cannot preach so-called 
evangelistic sermons; they cannot waken in- 
terest in the throng; they feel their need of 
help. Shall they get a professional evangel- 
ist to help them? Is it not better, if a pastor 
cannot win alone, that he get help and have 
a real revival, than struggle along alone? 
There may be men and circumstances which 
make it advisable to secure evangelistic help. 
The occasion is rare, and oftener than other- 
wise simply excuses the pastor from putting 
forth effort to win by some such method as 
he can use. I do not insist that every pastor 
can or should be a revival-meeting evangelist. 
To do that would imply that there is but the 
one method of being an evangelist, when in 



40 RURAL EVANGELISM 

fact there are several methods, some of them 
far better than the revival meeting. I do 
insist that every pastor must win souls, Chris- 
tianize communities and put his converts to 
work for God and humanity. Other methods 
than the revival meeting will be discussed 
later. Just now I want to point out some 
dangers of professionalism. 

We will go back to Rockwell charge, where 
in the previous chapter we left Brothers Bundy 
and Shanks considering the evangelistic cam- 
paign. A few days have passed and they 
meet again. 

"Well, Pastor, have you decided what you 
think best about that evangelistic campaign?' 5 
this good layman asks. 

"I'm not sure, but I think I would like 
to get Black and Kerr to help us. I have 
heard them so well spoken of, and they seem 
to have such splendid success everywhere, that 
I believe it would pay us to get them if we 
can. I have written to know if they can come,, 
and am waiting to hear. Would you favor 
getting them if they can be secured at the 
right time?" 

Again, in a brief moment, several things 
flash through Brother Shanks's mind. 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 41 

"Why! I'm surprised. Brother Bundy is a 
good preacher, as good as any evangelist we 
can get. Why doesn't he hold his own revival? 
I wonder why he thinks of getting an evan- 
gelist. I had thought him big enough for 
his job. Wonder if he has just a few sermons 
and doesn't want to make more, or if he knows 
he can't hold out long." 

Why is not an average layman justified in 
such thoughts when his pastor suggests getting 
evangelistic help? As a matter of fact, there 
is no question but that the pastor who asks 
for help, or willingly accepts it, often loses his 
grip to some extent on his people. At that 
most vital point he ceases to be their leader, 
and they must think either that he does not 
care to make the effort to lead, or knows he 
cannot lead to victory, which, in either case, 
causes them to distrust his leadership. 

Brother Shanks, then, has flashed before 
him a memory which is not pleasant. Three 
years ago they brought in an evangelist who 
had been highly commended, and who came 
on reasonable terms, and they had expected 
great things from his coming. Five weeks 
before he arrived the pastor had received 
from him a mimeographed plan of organiza- 



42 RURAL EVANGELISM 

tion, such as he sent to every community about 
five weeks before he arrived on the scene. 
Accompanying the plan was a personal letter 
to the pastor. After general directions for 
putting on the organization, the letter had 
concluded about like this: "And now let me 
say, dear brother, that if you will follow my 
plan of organization exactly and with genuine 
devotion and enthusiasm, I can guarantee you 
a great revival; but if you fail in this, then 
everything will probably fail. The meeting 
will win or fail by what you do between now 
and the time I get there." 

The pastor had seen Brother Shanks at that 
time, and they had talked over the entire 
plan and methods for putting it on. They 
agreed that if they were to have this gifted 
leader, they must follow his plans, and to- 
gether they considered the first things to be 
done. Just as they were about to part the 
pastor had said: "I don't quite like this bus- 
iness. According to this letter, everything 
depends on our putting on this organization. 
If we fail, the revival fails and the blame is 
ours. When the meeting is over this organ- 
ization will be worthless and we shall have to 
start all over again. Why, if we would de- 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 43 

velop our own organization, with the same 
enthusiasm with which we are developing his, 
and if we would spend a little of what he will 
cost us to put on a campaign of our own, 
could we not do as well without him as with 
him?" and they had agreed on that point 
while going ahead with the prescribed organ- 
ization. 

They did their best in every way. The 
pastor gave five weeks to preparation, and so 
did his workers. The evangelist arrived and 
on Sunday morning opened the series with a 
succession of stories intended to arouse emo- 
tion and awaken enthusiasm, and concluded by 
telling the people about the plan which he 
had sent the pastor, and assured them that 
with this preparation there was no doubt of 
what the outcome would be. As he went 
home that day, Brother Shanks said to himself, 
"Well, the evangelist is safe any way. He 
has an alibi with the pastor, and also with 
the congregation. If the meeting wins, he 
did it; if it fails, our pastor and we are to 
blame. I hope it wins, but it will take different 
preaching than the kind he gave us this 
morning." 

At the end of four weeks there had been 



44 RURAL EVANGELISM 

no stir, nothing accomplished. The evangelist 
had found some flaws in the preparatory work, 
and had pounced upon them caustically, ig- 
noring the fact that at that point his plan 
of organization was absolutely unfitted for 
that community. But Sunday school Decision 
Day was to be held the last Sunday of his 
stay, and he was banking on that for results. 
No appreciable result occurring up to that 
time, on that day the children were brought 
in, the teachers with their classes, and they 
filled the central portion of the room. The 
evangelist preached a sermon in which were 
striking illustrations dealing with murder, black 
hearts, the horror of sin, the danger of hell, 
and at last the exhortation that all the chil- 
dren come and kneel at the altar to be saved 
from their sins and from hell. They were 
assured that they would be lost if they did 
not come. Teachers were exhorted and threat- 
ened with what would come to them if they 
did not bring all the members of their classes 
down to the altar. Of course they all came. 
The evangelist had a great time with them, 
counted them, reported it a great victory, and 
concluded with "Didn't I tell you we never 
fail?" 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 45 

All this, as an unpleasant memory, went 
through Brother Shanks' s mind in a brief 
moment. Who can blame him for his antago- 
nism when his pastor suggested that they get 
an evangelist? Not all evangelists are like 
that one — not very many of them are — but 
there are enough of them to cause the average 
layman who loves his church uneasiness when 
evangelists are mentioned, and to raise the 
question whether the result likely to be gained 
is worth the risk. But Brother Shanks replied: 
"Well, I hardly know what to think, Pastor, 
I am not much in favor of getting an evan- 
gelist. I would much rather follow your 
leadership, work harder myself, and get the 
church to work with us. But if you think 
best, I'll follow your judgment. I shall stand 
by you, but be sure you are right before getting 
an evangelist." 

Again they separated, and when he reached 
home Brother Bundy sat thinking for a long 
time. He considered several things of which 
a layman would probably not take account. 
He also had memories. There was that time, 
five years ago at Etta Springs, when evangel- 
ist Bulger had helped him. It had been a 
great meeting. Bulger was a fine preacher, 



46 RURAL EVANGELISM 

sane and careful in his methods, and had done 
good work. His only fault had been in the 
length of his sermons. They were so long 
that he carried his congregation beyond the 
point where easiest response could be secured, 
and when the crucial moment arrived, he 
failed to get the results he might have had 
thirty minutes earlier. He was too keen about 
completing his sermon, and not sufficiently in 
touch with his audience. But it had been a 
good meeting, and about sixty had signified 
their intention of uniting with the church. 

His memory went back for a moment to the 
hour of eleven that last Sunday night. The 
meetings were over. Almost the entire con- 
gregation had gone to the station with the 
evangelist to see him off. He stood on the 
back platform of the Pullman waving his 
handkerchief, and the people stood watching 
the train pull away, waving in return. There 
were sixty converts to join the church next 
Sunday, and some of them were now watch- 
ing their spiritual father leave them orphaned, 
and to the care of strangers. It was a dis- 
tressing moment for them and for the pastor. 
The following day he had spent in his study 
with his records. He found that of the sixty 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 47 

converts thirty were from the Sunday school 
Decision Day service, which would have yielded 
much the same results had Brother Bulger not 
been there. He found that of the remaining 
thirty-two or three, more than twenty had 
been converted in their homes or offices under 
the persuasion of their pastor. Only seven 
were directly the product of the meeting. He 
was greatly encouraged to find that, after all, 
most of the converts were his own children, 
and would naturally follow him as their leader. 
Then his memory passed to the following 
years, when he had tried to keep those seven, 
and he was saddened to recall that although 
the members won by his own private efforts 
and from the Sunday school had remained 
true, more than half of the evangelist's con- 
verts had not been able to endure their or- 
phaned estate and had fallen away. At last 
he had concluded that it is difficult for anyone 
else to care for new converts successfully 
other than the one who brought them to Christ. 
That accounts for the large number of revival 
accessions who fall away from faith and the 
church, particularly if the revival is led by a 
professional evangelist who leaves the same 
evening that the meetings close. The work of 



48 RURAL EVANGELISM 

evangelism can never end with the revival. 
When converts are secured, the work of saving 
them has just begun, whether the pastor or 
an evangelist has led the meeting. The danger 
in professionalism, however, lies in the fact 
that it is hard for a stranger to lead the new 
convert. He had been attracted by the evan- 
gelist, believes in him, is often half converted 
to him. When the pastor or a helper attempts 
to help him, he does not feel the inspiration 
the evangelist gave him, is listless and in- 
different, resents the attempt of another to 
take the evangelist's place, and so falls away 
through no fault whatever save his own pref- 
erence for his spiritual father. 

Suddenly Brother Bundy sat upright, re- 
calling another incident which occurred soon 
after the close of the meeting at Etta Springs. 
Each morning he had walked down the village 
street for his mail, and had usually stepped 
in at the place of business of his best and most 
beloved parishioner for a few moments' chat. 
One Monday morning, three weeks after the 
meetings had closed, he had stopped in as 
usual. No one else was around, and he and 
Moody, his Sunday school superintendent, had 
talked freely about the church work. A 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 49 

quizzical look had come to his friend's eyes 
when they were about to part, as he smilingly 
said, "You don't seem to me to preach with 
as much punch as you did before the revival, 
Pastor. Are you tired, working too hard with 
the new converts, or am I just mistaken?" 
After a bit of chaff and joking they had sep- 
arated, but the pastor carried away a pain 
in his heart. Never had he tried so hard in 
the pulpit to meet the needs of his people. 
Never had he so put his heart into his preach- 
ing. What was the matter? At last he knew. 
Brother Bulger had packed into a dozen ser- 
mons all he had thought, all he had read, 
all he had felt, all his faith and hope and 
experience. Out of a large fund of illustrative 
matter he had selected the best and had used 
it in a masterly way. He had been a masterly 
preacher. Brother Bundy had to prepare two 
sermons each week besides other talks and 
addresses, visited his people, conducted funeral 
services, managed the details of his church, 
never repeated illustrations, and the evan- 
gelist's visit had simply made his task much 
more difficult. That was it. The people 
missed Bulger. That is the reason there is so 
often a slump after a great evangelist has been 



50 RURAL EVANGELISM 

in a church for a time. That is the reason the 
pastor so often feels ill at ease when the evan- 
gelist is gone and his people wonder what has 
happened to his preaching. 

Brethren, I do not believe in making any 
man's load lighter than it ought to be. We 
ministers are tempted almost beyond any 
other class of men to be lazy, to take life easy. 
No one demands our presence at the strike of 
a clock, except on Sundays and prayer-meeting 
nights. We can prepare our sermons when 
we will, and be our own masters more com- 
pletely than most men. It is to our everlasting 
credit that there are not more lazy men among 
us. There are a few of whom we are ashamed, 
but they are only a few. On the other hand, 
there is no call to make our task harder than 
it normally is. To get a professional evangelist 
is not to make our task less but more difficult. 
We would be wiser to work a bit harder at our 
main task, winning converts, and to ease the 
burden at some other points. 

And, finally, this question came with pound- 
ing force to Brother Bundy's mind: "Why 
have I thought or planned to get an evangelist? 
Am I afraid to trust God, or myself? No! 
Not that! Then am I afraid the people will 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 51 

not follow me? That is a slander on the 
people. They would rather follow their pastor 
than anyone else. Am I lazy, and shrink from 
the responsibility of this work?" Just there 
Brother Bundy held a private prayer meeting, 
and then, in the light which such prayer meet- 
ings often bring, he faced himself and his 
task and came to a definite decision upon which 
he asked the blessing of God. He said to him- 
self: "It was just the feeling that if I got a 
skilled, professional evangelist, it would be 
easier and a bit surer. I did shrink from under- 
taking the work alone. I was making a sort 
of refuge of the evangelist, excusing myself 
from that task by thinking I could get some- 
one else to do it better and easier, and letting 
the people pay for it. I am not a great re- 
vivalist, and I am poor at exhortation, and an 
evangelist would probably get in some people 
I shall not be able to reach; but with the 
people supporting me, working with me, and 
with a frank acceptance of the whole respon- 
sibility I believe that it will be better to go on 
without the evangelist. I'll just write a letter 
to Black and Kerr this moment canceling the 
engagement. Next time I see Brother Shanks 
I'll tell him what I've decided and why, and 



52 RURAL EVANGELISM 

next Sunday I will begin preparation for the 
revival. I'm glad that's settled, and settled 
rightly." 

Brother Bundy had really gone to the heart 
of the greatest danger in professionalism. 
Ministers are as human as any one. Heavy 
work distresses them, daunts them, just as it 
does others. Why do so many men hire their 
furnaces cared for? Surely not because they 
do not have time to do it. They would be 
better off if they did it themselves, for they 
need the exercise. They hire it done to get 
rid of an irksome chore. Why do many women 
keep maids? Because they have not the time 
or strength to care for their own homes? 
Certainly not! They do it in order that they 
may be free, have their liberty, get rid of 
disagreeable work. Ministers have the same 
impulse, and when there are professionals 
galore begging for a chance to come and take 
a heavy chore off their shoulders, it is not 
surprising that a good many use them. The 
chief danger is that the pastor may come, 
finally, to lack enthusiasm for the thing he 
can so easily turn over to another, and so 
cease entirely to be an evangelist. 

I have been dealing with this subject as 



EVERY PASTOR AN EVANGELIST 53 

though a revival meeting were the only way 
by which to do the work of an evangelist. 
There are successful pastor-evangelists who do 
not depend at all upon special meetings for 
their converts. The day ought never to come 
when Methodists will cease to hold special 
meetings; but the day has already come when 
Methodist ministers should not depend ex- 
clusively upon any kind of revival meeting 
for their converts. Every pastor can and must 
be an evangelist, but not every pastor can be 
a successful special meeting revivalist. 

After this hour with himself and God, the 
pastor called Brother Shanks on the phone: 
"Hello! Brother Shanks? Lucky to get you 
the first thing. Say, Fve been thinking over 
our conversation of this morning, and have 
made up my mind and hope you'll approve. 
I have written Black and Kerr that we have 
changed our plans and will not want them. 
I want that we should trust ourselves and 
God and go at it without an evangelist's help. 55 

Then for a few moments there was eager 
response from the other end of the telephone, 
and from the expression of pleasure, mingled 
with surprise, on the pastor's face one could 
guess very accurately what was being said. 



54 RURAL EVANGELISM 

After all, when a man has taken up his cross, 
or accepted his task, to have good men say 
that they believe he can win, and that he can 
count on their support, gladdens the heart and 
makes effort to the limit of power and en- 
durance a delight. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 

In considering the evangelistic message, the 
reader may understand me to be referring 
either to the message from the pulpit, called 
a sermon, or to the personal appeal made to 
a single individual. What may be properly 
called an evangelistic message? I am not to 
deal so much with the subject-matter of the 
sermon as with the method and aim, or the 
use to which such matter shall be put* Some 
ministers are able to turn a very clean-cut 
discussion of the philosophy of prayer to ac- 
count as an evangelistic appeal, while others 
with such a subject will flounder, get lost, or 
be merely coldly logical. Phillips Brooks could 
make any subject serve evangelistic ends e 
Jonathan Edwards thundered the law and 
threatened doom in such terms as would empty 
a church in these days, but with such spirit 
that he made himself the greatest evangelist 
New England has ever produced. I propose 
just now that we shall think more about the 

55 



56 RURAL EVANGELISM 

character of the message, its soul, its intent 
and spirit, than of its substance. 

In the first place, then, it will be a per- 
suasive message. "Vengeance belongeth unto 
me, saith the Lord," notwithstanding the fact 
that some ministers indicate by the spirit of 
their preaching that he has turned the job of 
exacting retribution over to them. It is God 
who will "hew to the line and lay judgment 
to the plummet/ 5 though the thundering in- 
vective and bitter denunciation indulged in by 
some men in the pulpit might indicate that 
they have ascended to the seat of judgment. 

It is said that after Sam Jones had been 
holding a meeting for about a week in a South- 
ern city where he was well known, one evening 
he said in his quaint way: "I've been here 
about a week now, and I've found out a lot 
of things about you folks that I'm going to 
tell you to-night. Pact is, I'm just naturally 
going to take your hide off, salt it, and hang 
it up to dry. If any of you want to get out, 
why now's the time to go before I begin. If 
you start in, you must stay through." Every- 
body laughed, thought it a good joke, and 
stayed to hear what he had to say. Mr. Jones 
did say frequently some very plain and em- 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 57 

phatic things in his original way which awak- 
ened merriment and conviction and did good. 
A young Methodist minister from up country 
was there that night and thought it was truly 
wonderful. He went home and next Sunday 
morning when he got up to preach he said, 
very solemnly — and he was noted for his sin- 
cerity and solemnity — "I've been your pastor 
now about two years, and during that time 
I've learned a good deal about you, much of 
it not to your credit. This morning I'm just 
naturally going to take the hide off the last 
one of you, salt it, and hang it up to dry. If 
any of you don't want to see it done, you had 
better leave right now." Knowing him and 
his lack of humor, the people simply got up 
and went home. The difference was that Sam 
Jones said things like that with a loving pat 
on the shoulder, and there was no spleen in it, 
while the young man up country felt that he 
was called to take the work of retribution out 
of the hands of the Lord and attend to it 
himself. 

I recently heard Dr. George B. Dean, Super- 
intendent of the Department of Evangelism 
of the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 



58 RURAL EVANGELISM 

say that he likes to hear a church organ when 
a strain of some familiar tune or hymn runs 
through the music. Let the organ roar, rum- 
ble, whisper, laugh, or weep, but always let 
him hear "Home, Sweet Home/ 5 "I need thee 
every hour/' or "Nearer, my God, to thee" 
flashing like sunlight through it all. He then 
said that in exactly the same way, the quality 
of persuasiveness should run through every 
sermon. His taste in music may not be above 
question, but surely his judgment of what 
constitutes real preaching is sound. When our 
Lord called us to the ministry he did not 
commission us to take a club, a baseball bat, 
a flaying knife, and go into the world to con- 
demn and punish every creature. Rather he 
commissioned each of us to say, "I beseech 
you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." 
We must denounce sin without hating the 
sinner; we must warn the sinner and yet make 
him feel that we love him; we must declare 
the truth about sin and righteousness, but 
with tenderness of heart and voice, and with- 
out malice or rancor. 

A good story is told of one of Methodism's 
great scholars, a teacher in one of our theolog- 
ical seminaries. Having scholarly instincts and 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 59 

accustomed himself to delve deep after truth, 
he is not given in his lectures to much orna- 
mentation. He seems to think that students 
will be delighted to get the simple truth with- 
out adornment. His classes sometimes delight 
to get him off on a tanget, both to get light 
on a side question, and to relieve their minds 
from the tremendous task of following him in 
deep places. He is lovingly called "Uncle 
Henry" by his hundreds of friends and ad- 
mirers. One day when the class was exhausted 
in the attempt to keep pace with him, and on 
the heels of a philosophical statement on the 
subject of retribution, some one asked, "Doctor, 
should we ever preach on hell?" 

There was a moment's hesitation. Then 
"Uncle Henry" slowly removed his glasses, 
looked leisurely around the room, and replied 
with more fervor than usual, "Yes, young 
men. Preach on hell, after you have wept all 
night the night before." 

Too many, when preaching on hell, indicate 
that they are glad there is such a place, and 
that knowing some people who should go 
there and having authority to put them there, 
they purpose to make a good job of it. Hell 
ought to be thought of with horror. The 



60 RURAL EVANGELISM 

evangelistic pastor will think of it as a place 
of doom to which he fears some of those to 
whom he speaks will fall. He sees the place 
vividly, but with no delight. He sees the people 
on one hand, tempted, weak, blind, and hell 
on the other, while he himself stands between, 
commissioned to keep as many as possible 
from coming even near the brink of it. He 
feels his responsibility and the danger of the 
people, but he knows that he cannot force 
them back. He must persuade them, beseech 
them to keep at a safe distance. Before he 
preaches on hell he ought to "Veep all the 
night before." 

An evangelistic message will be well pre- 
pared. It is a mistake for any pastor to feel 
that he can prepare his sermon for each evening 
day by day during the revival. That is where 
the evangelist has the advantage over most 
pastors. He has a definite series of sermons 
into which he has put his best thought and 
effort. He may not be much of a preacher, 
but the best there is of him he has put into 
those sermons. If a pastor purposes to conduct 
special meetings each year, why should he not 
begin early in the year, select a series of themes 
for his meeting, study them, prepare them with 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 61 

great care, write them out and pray over them 
until they literally saturate his soul, and then 
go to his task? He will not then be at such 
a disadvantage with the professional. If it is 
urged that such an arrangement does not give 
the Holy Spirit opportunity to guide in the 
choice of themes, or the use of incidents in 
the meetings as illustrative matter, I reply that 
the Holy Spirit can see further than half a day 
ahead, and that such latitude in preparation 
may be allowed as will make it possible to 
enforce the lessons of the meeting, just as the 
evangelist himself might do. One reason, it 
seems to me, why evangelistic services con- 
ducted by the pastor have lost their swing, 
and that professionals have come in, is in the 
fact that pastors do not make such preparation 
as they should. In the old camp-meeting days, 
every preacher brought out his greatest ser- 
mons and preached them over and over again. 
They were well prepared, and the preacher had 
victory before he began to preach. 

That brings me to the second step in the 
preparation of evangelistic sermons. It in- 
volves the preparation of the preacher himself. 
In my youth I often attended the sessions of 
Gregory Presbytery of the Cumberland Presby- 



62 RURAL EVANGELISM 

terian Church, and always expected Dr. Proctor 
to preach a great sermon on the Sunday morn- 
ing of the session. I shall never forget his 
sermon at Archer City, in 1892. I do not 
recall his text, or much that he said, but I 
do recall that I saw the waters of the fountain 
for sin and uncleanness, "which was opened 
in the house of King David," go flowing by 
that day. I saw the people go and bathe in 
its waters; I went with them, and came away 
with shouts in my heart. It was a wonderful 
sermon and a wonderful day. 

Later, when I was about to be installed as 
pastor of a little church in Henrietta, Texas, I 
wanted Dr. Proctor to preach the sermon, and 
my own grandfather to deliver the charge. It 
was a beautiful day and the people were 
expectant. But Dr. Proctor preached a poor, 
crippled sermon with no soul in it. I heard 
him frequently after that, but never heard him 
preach as he always did at Presbytery. Finally 
I became well acquainted with him, and with 
the daring of a young cub, I asked him one 
day, "Dr. Proctor, please tell me why it is 
that at Presbytery you always preach such a 
wonderful sermon, and at other times you do 
not get along so well." 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 63 

After a moment's hesitation he replied, 
"Well, I always know I am to preach at Presby- 
tery, and I get ready for it, I don't mean 
that I prepare a sermon. Of course I do that, 
I get the sermon ready weeks ahead of time; 
but then I get myself ready. I know who will 
be there, and I think about the ministers, their 
families, their hardships, hopes, needs; and one 
after another I take them to the Lord in 
prayer, each time asking that I may be used 
in that sermon to help them. Then I take up 
the church where the service will be held, and 
'pray through' for that. When I go to the 
pulpit at last I simply open my heart and the 
sermon comes through it from my head. At 
other times I do not know the people, have 
not prepared myself to serve them, and my 
preaching is pretty dry." 

For twenty-five years this method of prep- 
aration for the pulpit has been in my mind, 
and now I pass it on to you and commend it 
to every one of you who sincerely wishes to 
be an evangelist. Prepare your sermon early, 
then leave time for the preparation of yourself. 
To keep his own private skies clear is not the 
final preparation of the preacher; he must be 
in touch with his people, know their needs, 



64 RURAL EVANGELISM 

feel their needs, and be determined to supply 
the agency through which divine grace may 
meet them. 

Briefly, then, all this implies that evangelis- 
tic preaching must be definitely personal. It 
must meet the needs of individuals in their 
efforts to be good; it must fit power to need; 
it must awaken individual hope and confidence, 
and lead to personal faith. The logical settle- 
ment of all philosophical questions to the 
satisfaction of every hearer will not so surely 
accomplish this end as the personal testimony 
of one heart to another, followed by the appeal, 
with the emphasis upon the "thou" which 
Moses made to Jethro, "Come thou with us, 
and we will do thee good." 

The evangelistic message must be unmis- 
takably positive. In an Oklahoma town where 
I was pastor many years ago, one Monday 
morning the leading man of the community 
called me into his office. He had been reared 
a Methodist, but was attending another church 
with his wife. I was very young, and having 
been in the community only a few weeks, felt 
much awed in the presence of the great man 
who had never spoken tome before, and won- 
dered what he could want with me. As soon 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 65 

as we were seated, he asked: "Mr. Wagner, 
do you believe anything? and if you do believe 
something, do you preach it?" 

I was startled. My mind was a blank for 
a moment. Then I gathered enough wit to 
reply: "Why, certainly I do, sir. I surely 
would not preach what I do not believe." 

"Of course not. But do you believe any- 
thing is positively true, and do you preach 
that? This is why I ask. For over a year the 
minister where I worship has been telling us 
that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that 
Job never lived; that Jonah was never really 
swallowed by a whale; that Isaiah was written 
by a number of different men, and that much 
in the book usually looked upon as prophecy 
is really history; that probably most of the 
miracles mentioned in the New Testament are 
no more miracles than familiar events which 
take place in our own time. He preaches what 
he believes, but he believes much more intensely 
that many things are untrue than that any- 
thing is actually true. I want to know what 
is true, not what is not true. I am sixty-odd 
years of age. All my life I have had to fight 
doubt. What little faith I have left, given 
me by my Methodist mother, is my most 



66 RURAL EVANGELISM 

precious possession. I need help to keep it, 
not stimulus for my doubts. I want to hear a 
minister stand up and say, as though thrilled 
by the truth of it, that this is true and the 
other thing is true, because he has tried it 
out and knows. I can think up enough doubts, 
find enough of them in the magazines and 
books I read, without having them hurled at 
me from the pulpit. Now, young man, if you 
preach anything positive, Fm coming to hear 
you. But for God's sake don't help the devil 
— if there is a devil — to finish his work in me, 
by making me lose faith in everything my 
mother taught me about religion/ 5 

There were tears in the old man's eyes 
when he finished. He had asked for help to 
escape the destruction the pulpit was working 
in his soul. Let no minister, however erudite, 
imagine that he is building the souls of men 
when he is preaching negations. We must be 
builders. If our people are cherishing empty 
hopes, holding to dead faiths, let us give them 
positive, reasonable hopes and living faith. 
Quickened by these, they will clear away the 
rubbish of mistake and error without our 
help. How quickly one will move out of an 
old house into a new, after the new one is 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 67 

built and offered him, and he is able to com- 
pare the new with the old! But begin to tear 
down the old house about his head, before he 
even knows that a new one is to be built, and 
you lose the opportunity to build for him a 
new house. I do not fear destructive criticism; 
let us welcome it where it belongs — in the 
study of the scholar. But when it has de- 
molished something, let us not begin imme- 
diately to call the attention of our people to 
that fact. Let us, rather, wait until con- 
structive criticism has furnished something to 
take its place, has built a new and better 
house, and then without condemning the old* 
let us invite our people into the new house. 
They will discard the old quickly enough. 
Evangelistic preaching must be positive preach- 
ing. 

We ministers may have our own troubles 
with doubts in the field of philosophy. If we 
think, we shall have doubts, and we will strug- 
gle with them manfully. But to win, as preach- 
ers, we must believe some things with abandon. 
We must not be vague or driven about by 
every wind of doctrine. There must be eternal 
rock under our feet; we must build our houses 
upon that rock. It is an omen for good that 



68 RURAL EVANGELISM 

positive faith among us is stronger to-day 
than it was yesterday. Never were our schools 
of theology so positive in their teaching, or so 
worthy of our earnest support. They are 
building, and they are turning out builders. 
It was not always so. Not many years ago 
the students of an Eastern seminary were dis- 
cussing matters of devotion. One young man 
remarked that he did not believe people prayed 
enough for students, particularly for theological 
students, and that he wished some one would 
write a good prayer for such students for the 
people to study. He thought that a produc- 
tion of that kind might stimulate the people 
to such prayer. Every such group has at 
least one wag in it, and the wag of this group 
saw his opportunity and remarked: "Why, 
don't you know there is such a prayer, suit- 
able for us? It is in the Prayer Book of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and is entitled 
'Prayer for those at sea 5 ! 55 The laugh that 
followed was good-natured, but the wag had 
struck at a very grave danger among preach- 
ers. We must not be "at sea" in our spiritual 
sailing. 

Evangelistic preaching must link people up 
together in proper social contact. There is no 



THE EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE 69 

place for the cloister, the hermit, in our times, 
and what we preach will find its test and 
prove its right to live in the effect it has upon 
the social contacts of the people. We must 
live together and we must live in peace. Re- 
ligion must bring peace among men by making 
them peaceable. And peaceable men must be 
so organized and related one to the other that 
the peace within them may have opportunity 
to bear its normal and legitimate fruit. Two 
men, each with a peaceable mind, may be 
brought into conflict by an impossible social 
order. While this is not the place to discuss a 
Christian social order, it must be said that 
evangelistic preaching has for its aim the saving 
of both men and the social organization in 
which they live. 

Evangelistic preaching must dig down and 
deal with the motives of life, seek out the 
will and bring it into subjection to God's 
will. Culture has its place in the work of the 
church, and it is a large and honorable place. 
If by that term culture of the heart is meant, 
then it includes all of religion. But if we mean 
merely polish, adornment of conduct, gentility 
of manners, then evangelism must dig beneath 
such veneer and plow deep in the heart. Mo- 



70 RURAL EVANGELISM 

tives are spiritual; ideals are spiritual; faith 
is spiritual; our message must be spiritual. 
It must seek to sanctify motive, to Christian- 
ize ideals and to anchor faith in God through 
Jesus Christ. Such is the character of the 
evangelistic appeal. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE REVIVAL MEETING 

Revival meetings are of comparatively 
modern origin. I cannot find that they are 
commanded by the apostles. True we read in 
Ephesians 4. 11 that "he gave some, apostles; 
and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; 
and some, pastors and teachers." Apostles, 
prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers — that is 
the order in which they are given, and sug- 
gests that it is the order of their importance. 
But in the Scriptures a prophet is a preacher; 
an evangelist a missionary, establishing the 
church where it did not exist; pastors care 
for the moral and social welfare of the people, 
and teachers fill the same office as at present. 
There is no warrant here for either revival 
meetings or modern evangelists, except such as 
Bishops Thoburn and Bashford and Lewis. 
Philip was such an evangelist, or missionary, 
but from him to modern evangelists is a long 
cry, just as there is a wide difference between 

71 



72 RURAL EVANGELISM 

his method of work with a community or a 
single soul and modern revival meetings. 

John Wesley was an evangelist in a land 
where the Established Church was dull and 
dead. But John Wesley conducted nothing 
comparable to modern revivals, and used 
nothing like their methods. He did preach in 
the coal pits, on the streets and by the road- 
side, and on occasion preached two or three 
times a day for two or three days in succes- 
sion at the same place. But this was usually 
in communities where no class had been formed 
and where no pastor was located, in order to 
open the way for such organization. 

Students of early American Methodism are 
fond of saying that our fathers were compelled 
to organize a new American church in order 
that they and their neighbors might have such 
means of grace as the sacraments, and the 
privilege of calling their spiritual leaders "pas- 
tors." It is said that at the close of the Revolu- 
tionary War there were entire colonies with 
scarcely an ordained minister in them. Ne- 
cessity, "the mother of invention," called forth 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

In those days great circuits, requiring from 
four to eight weeks to travel, were the rule. 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 73 

As late as 1860, along the Mississippi River 
and westward, there were still such circuits. 
There were few church buildings, and not 
enough ministers to reach their appointments 
more than once in several weeks. At the best, 
from six to a dozen sermons annually was about 
all the service the people could expect. Again 
something had to be done, and necessity 
"invented" the camp meeting. What was more 
natural, since the ministers could not take the 
gospel to the people, than that the people 
should come to the ministers? A camping 
place was selected at a point convenient to 
several communities, and the people came 
from the country round for a week or ten 
days of spiritual feasting. The movement 
caught the imagination of ministers and people 
of the entire country, and the camp meeting 
was soon looked upon as the means ordained 
of God for the saving of the world. 

But the country developed, communities 
grew larger, places of worship were built, min- 
isters became more numerous, Sunday schools 
were organized, and, finally, anyone could hear 
if he cared to from one to three sermons each 
week. The necessity which "invented" the 
camp meeting was gone, and with it went the 



74 RURAL EVANGELISM 

"invention/' Its departure was slow and 
painful. There are not lacking even to-day 
those who believe that their going was due 
to the deadness and lack of spirituality in the 
church. 

But before the camp meeting was entirely 
abandoned, and because the people did not 
care to leave their homes to attend them, or 
did not feel the need of such attendance, pas- 
tors began holding special series of meetings, 
patterned after the camp meeting, at a con- 
venient time in their local churches. The 
revival meeting, then, is a child of the camp 
meeting, and in its modern phases does not 
date its origin prior to that institution. It is 
a miniature camp meeting and came forth to 
take its place. Its roots are not in the founda- 
tions of the gospel, but in the needs of an 
age and social order. It is no more reasonable 
to assume that people not given to revival 
meetings of the evangelistic type are not 
spiritual than that they are not spiritual who 
do not attend a camp meeting. There is nothing 
either in history or the Bible to make such 
meetings the only, or chief, evangelistic agency 
of the church. There is much in both reason 
and history to commend other methods and 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 75 

means, some of which are discussed in these 
pages. 

Along with the camp meeting there arose 
mighty men of striking personality and ability, 
as such meetings must have for their leader- 
ship. Not every minister could be a success- 
ful camp meeting preacher. Equally, revival 
meetings require special personality and mental 
equipment. Some pastors can never be suc- 
cessful revival meeting evangelists. Such meet- 
ings demand a peculiar power of exhortation 
not possessed by most men. I recall an expe- 
rience of my own which began as a sort of 
nightmare, but turned into a blessed benedic- 
tion. I was immature as a minister, but had 
been asked to help in the revival at the 
old home church where my grandfather had 
preached until, broken in health, he had been 
succeeded by his son. My uncle had asked me 
to help him. I began preaching on Sunday 
morning, and we held services twice each day. 
Friday came, and I perceived conviction in the 
large audience and believed it was time to 
"cast the net." After preaching that evening 
with what unction I possessed, I asked for 
penitents to come to the "mourners' bench." 
With all my soul I longed to see them come, 



76 RURAL EVANGELISM 

and I exhorted with ringing voice and sincere 
urgency, while the audience sang through a 
long hymn. I felt that the people were moved, 
that they were ready to act, but no one came 
forward. I was about to give up when I felt 
a gentle touch on my arm, and turned to see 
grandfather standing by my side. What an 
old-time giant he was! And how I had admired 
him in the days of his strength! He was 
seventy-five years old at this time, and ema- 
ciated with the ailment which took him "up 
higher" the next year. Tall of form, spare of 
frame, with long beard, piercing eyes, and hair 
scarcely turned gray, he stood and said, "Son, 
let me try." He was like a "great rock in a 
weary land," for I knew that if God would 
give him voice and strength he would sweep 
that audience to the altar. I do not recall 
what he said. I dare say it was much the 
same as I had said. I do recall how he said 
it. At first deliberate and low of voice, within 
two minutes every word could have been heard 
through the block. His eyes were bright, his 
shoulders thrown back, and the spirit of an 
old charger was in him as he pleaded with 
men to give their souls a chance. Aware of 
his failing strength, and knowing that within 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 77 

five minutes after he began to speak he would 
be shaken with paroxysms of coughing, he 
began the sooner to call them to the altar. 
And they came and came until the altar was 
filled with scores of seekers. It was a great 
service. I have heard since then the greatest 
preachers in America, and have been thrilled 
by their eloquence. I have even tried to 
pattern after some of them in the matter of 
sermon building, and to obey the exhortations 
of others. But I should prefer to-day, had I 
my choice, to listen to such an exhortation as 
I heard that night than to hear the greatest 
preacher in the land. Possibly it would not 
produce the same results as then; the day for 
such things may be past. It probably is. But 
if we are to do for our generation what the 
preachers of that day did for theirs, we must 
find some method that we can use as effectively 
in the present as they found and developed 
in the past. 

I started to say that modern evangelists 
have sprung up because of the demand for 
specialists who can succeed in revival meet- 
ings. The modern evangelist is the product 
of the necessity of the revival meeting for a 
leader. His calling arose out of the revival 



78 RURAL EVANGELISM 

meeting. When the church discovers that the 
revival is merely a bridge between the old-time 
camp meeting and the day when we shall 
get back to the evangelism of settled condi- 
tions and a church working steadily the year 
around, the need for the special evangelist 
will have passed, and he will return to the 
pastorate. He has filled an important place 
among us, has done great service, but it is 
time for pastors to take up and carry their 
own burdens, and to cease to depend upon 
others to do it for them. Probably the chief 
weakness of modern church activity has been 
the dependence of many pastors upon the 
revival specialist to attend in a very short 
time to the church's evangelistic obligations, 
and thus free themselves from duties for which 
they fancied they were not qualified. 

There is a place, however, a vital place, 
in our church life and work for the special 
meeting, the revival. It will be a sad day 
for the church when the pastors no more 
announce the day for such a meeting. The 
ministry of the revival has been twofold. It 
has been the means of warming up the church 
and of focusing attention on the work of 
evangelism; it has held the church to its chief 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 79 

mission and made the world aware that the 
church was at its task, and by means of it 
many have been saved. 

For reasons I need not now discuss, revivals 
are not as successful as they formerly were. 
The pastor who depends upon a revival meeting 
for his recruits for church membership, or for 
fulfilling the mission of the gospel to save 
souls, finds that few of his own people attend 
the services, while the unconverted are con- 
spicuously absent. After many disappoint- 
ments in such efforts, he is beginning to seek 
out a method better suited to his day, that 
will accomplish genuine results. 

It is well, however, to hold revival services 
at least once each year. Such meetings serve 
as a climax toward which a pastor may focus 
his year's work, and should be a time of re- 
joicing. There is something peculiarly inspir- 
ing in the spectacle of a people coming together 
night after night for the worship of God. 
The church which will not do this for at least 
a week each year is indeed at a low spiritual 
level. In most communities the revival is not, 
however, the best means for arousing such a 
church in these times. In the chapter on 
"An Evangelistic Program" a better method 



80 RURAL EVANGELISM 

will be discussed. The mission of the revival 
of the future will be to do for the laymen what 
institutes and conventions do for ministers. 
It will be a time for spontaneous praise and 
rejoicing, but more particularly for learning 
how better to do the work of the church. 

The time set for the revival should be an- 
nounced early in the year, and the activities 
of the year focused upon it as a climax for 
every undertaking. Like Commencement Day, 
like the parade at the end of the war, like 
Thanksgiving Day at the end of harvest, 
the revival should signalize achievement, and 
there should not lack hard work to provide 
something over which to rejoice. If a revival 
breaks out during the year, it only proves that 
the work looking toward victory is being well 
done; but it is fatal idly to wait, depending 
upon a revival breaking out. Usually unlooked- 
for revivals occur not where the church is 
simply waiting for them, but where it is work- 
ing faithfully with a revival in view but set 
for some later day. Do not leave the revival 
date unfixed. If a farmer could plant corn at 
any time in the year, how different would be 
his work! Because he must plant within a 
period of about two weeks, he is ready for it 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 81 

when the time comes. Lack of fixed dates 
and purposes and program make the work of 
many ministers correspondingly vague and un- 
certain. Set the revival date and then do 
the work necessary before that date arrives, 
and the revival will come in truth. 

Let the pastor lead his own revival. Why, 
in this hour of rejoicing over victory, should 
another take his place? If he has led his 
church to victory, let him march at the head 
of the procession in the great parade. Let 
him not depend upon the revival for his con- 
verts, but make it a time of rejoicing over 
them, and it will be easy for him to be the 
leader. 

Do not plan for too extended a period of 
revival. Such efforts are a weariness to flesh 
and spirit. A week may be sufficient; two 
weeks certainly will be. If a church has 
worked faithfully throughout the year, if it 
has accomplished anything, then it should not 
require a protracted period to arrive at a 
climax and rejoice over it. 

The same suggestion may be made with 
reference to the length of each service in the 
series. Because people will go to a theater 
and sit for three hours with apparent delight, 



82 RURAL EVANGELISM 

is no argument that the same people, or even 
deeply spiritual people who may never attend 
a theater, ought to sit for an equal length of 
time and with equal pleasure in a religious 
service. A theater is a place of amusement, 
of diversion, where one laughs, relaxes, takes 
his ease. A religious service is or should be 
tense, demanding close attention, and often 
stirring deep emotion. It is not a time of re- 
laxation but of high endeavor. As well say 
that if one can sit in a theater three hours, 
one can run swiftly for three hours, as that 
one should enjoy a church service for that 
length of time. The only way any normal 
person could enjoy so long a service would 
be to sleep through it. An hour is sufficiently 
long for most services, and no service should 
continue beyond an hour and a half. An hour 
packed full and at high tide will be far better 
than an hour and a half with the same con- 
tent, but at lower pressure and of diminishing 
interest. The service should close at its climax. 
This is as good a time as any to say that 
an entire evening of such a revival can well 
be given to praise and testimony; to reports 
of personal workers regarding their joy in 
service; to reports from the Sunday school 



THE REVIVAL MEETING 83 

superintendent, Epworth League president, and 
presidents of the Ladies' Aid, Woman's Foreign 
and Woman's Home Missionary Societies. An- 
other evening could be given up to the official 
board, to discuss the program of the church, 
what its aims for the year just closing have 
been, what its objectives for the next year 
are to be, the financial situation, or other 
urgent problems. 

An entire evening could be given up to the 
study of hymns and the Hymnal. A hymn 
might be read, studied briefly, anecdotes about 
it told, its music explained, and then the 
hymn sung through, and repeated until it is 
mastered. In this way about five or six hymns 
could be studied in an evening. Two evenings 
in a revival could easily be spent in this way 
greatly to the profit of the church. If the 
pastor can sing, he should conduct this service. 
An evening could be devoted to the new con- 
verts and those who had joined the church 
during the year; and still another evening could 
be occupied with an open discussion of the 
meaning of church membership, the nature of 
the church vows, the value of church ritual, 
and similar questions. By following this 
course and using some inventive genius in 



84 RURAL EVANGELISM 

selecting additional subjects for other evenings, 
the revival period can be made a season of 
real ministry to the church, to be appreciated 
and used accordingly. 

As in other services of the church, conver- 
sions will be expected and sought in the revival, 
though that will not be its chief object. That 
will be a by-product rather than the chief 
result of such an undertaking. Evangelism 
must be made the supreme business of the 
church the year around, and that cannot be 
done so long as it is supposed that a revival 
will accomplish a year's work within a period 
of two or three weeks. It would be a blessing 
to the entire church if pastors and churches 
would agree to employ the revival especially 
for purposes of spiritual culture, and to do the 
work of evangelism in the regular services of 
the church throughout the year. 



CHAPTER V 
PERSONAL EVANGELISM 

I recently heard a well-known Methodist 
minister say, "My mother's hands upon me 
had much more to do with making a minister 
of me than the hands of any bishop." Go 
back to the beginning of Christian experience 
in your own life and you will find some indi- 
vidual to have been the direct agent of God 
in your salvation. Even those of us who were 
converted at the altar in an old-time revival, 
if we think it over, will recall some person who 
brought us there, or helped us to faith after 
we took that step. 

A few years ago Dr. J. 0. Peck wrote that 
if to save his own soul he must win a thousand 
converts in two years, and might choose one 
method only in which to work, he would un- 
hesitatingly choose the method of personal 
appeal to individuals one by one. And Dr. 
Peck was a great preacher. Bishop L. J. 
Birney, formerly dean of Boston University 
School of Theology, said recently to a group 

85 



86 RURAL EVANGELISM 

of New England pastors: "If twelve of us will 
band ourselves together to win one person to 
Christian experience this year, and so to train 
him that in turn next year he shall win another 
and likewise train him, so that the next year 
he shall win still another and train him, and so 
on for twenty-seven years, each of us and our 
converts keeping up the record year by year, 
there would not remain an unconverted or 
untrained individual on earth. No one of us 
would have saved more than one individual in 
an entire year, but the world would be saved." 
The real problem of evangelism is to get 
Christians, all Christians, at work at it. Evan- 
gelistic preaching must have for its aim the 
conversion of sinners, and the stimulating of 
believers to evangelistic effort for one soul at 
a time. Some one has said that evangelism 
is "Christian salesmanship," and that "we 
need more salesmen as well as better salesmen." 
Too long the preaching and revival-meeting 
method have been our chief agencies for such 
salesmanship, and the time has come for 
singling men out and winning them one by one. 
Laymen must engage in the task, but pastors 
must stimulate them to it, and no pastor can 
send others to do what he is not doing himself. 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 87 

I am speaking to pastors, and, my brothers, 
you must practice personal evangelism; you 
must win men one at a time. 

The personal method is not the easiest 
method* The sermon method, for ministers, at 
least, is the easiest. In fact, is there anything 
in the world so exhilarating, so perfectly thrill- 
ing, as preaching? We ministers know, even 
if some of our hearers do not, how exhilarating 
preaching is. There is exhilaration for the 
preacher in the preparation of a sermon. I 
enjoy hunting and fishing. Think of a trout 
stream in June! The trout are there without 
doubt, but they are not striking your flies. 
You stand back in the shadows, keep quiet a 
while, change your flies, test your leader, try 
again, cast after cast. Not a rise. You wan- 
der off up stream, change flies again, try other 
pools, but finally come back to that best pool 
you have seen. You creep on hands and 
knees. You dare not breathe a full breath, nor 
let your shadow strike the water. You do not 
disturb the grass or a bush along the stream's 
margin. Again you cast a perfect cast at 
exactly the right spot, below foamy waters 
where the current flows on again beyond a 
great bowlder. This time there is a strike, a 



88 RURAL EVANGELISM 

stout jerk and then a steady pull, and you 
forget everything else and just fight. 

But now, let us say, it is Tuesday, or Monday 
evening, and next Sunday you are to stand 
up before a hundred or more men and women 
and try to catch one of them for God. What 
bait will attract them? No man is dull and 
sleepy with his fly book in his hand and a pool 
before him. No man ought to be dull and 
listless with his Bible in his hand and the 
people in his imagination. To get a sermon, 
to feel confident that you have the right one 
because you have consulted the highest author- 
ity about it, and that this sermon will prove 
to be the cast which will lure the soul by the 
fisherman's art, is thrilling beyond words. 

But again it is Sunday morning. The ser- 
mon was finished long ago and lies back there 
in the study and down in the minister's brain 
and heart. With the assurance of orders 
from Headquarters, he has come into his 
pulpit. There are three hundred people be- 
fore him, all there to hear him and offering him 
a sportsman's chance to make a catch that 
day. They have sung a hymn, the preliminary 
service is over, and the preacher is in his 
pulpit, his throne, and all eyes are upon him, 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 89 

all ears open to him. What is the excitement 
of the trout fisherman compared with this 
thrilling moment? He is not alone. God is 
with him. His voice rings out, and God is 
in it to enforce the message. Yonder is a 
haggard face; over here a serene one with 
heart ready for service; and there a perplexed 
one, revealing some great problem to be settled. 
There are little children whose confidence the 
minister has held and still holds, young people 
with wonder in their eyes as they look out on 
the untried way of life, old people with the 
mists of evening in their eyes as they approach 
the time for evening devotions and well-earned 
rest, strong men whose minds need temporary 
deliverance from business cares, women who 
need a glance into calm skies after the turmoil 
of a week of household drudgery, and the 
minister stands there with those needs before 
him. Open your lips, you herald of good news 
to a world in need, and speak with assurance! 
What if your knees tremble, your hands shake 
and your voice is vibrant with emotion? It 
it time to make your cast, and this time you 
shall land your catch! Who does not thrill 
at such work? We sometimes talk about 
ministers having a hard time, but they who 



90 RURAL EVANGELISM 

say such things know nothing about the ex- 
hilaration of preaching. If only one could 
live on such pay, that alone would be sufficient 
compensation for being a preacher. 

Personal evangelism, on the contrary, is 
never easy. It is delicate and difficult work. 
It is so personal, deals with such intimacies 
and secret depths of the soul, that one must 
have a holy daring, a blessed effrontery, almost 
a fearless audacity, to engage in it. It is 
never practiced accidentally. One does not 
drift into it. Deliberate choice alone leads to 
this kind of work, and in that choice is the 
spirit of sacrificial service. If it is not your 
practice to do this kind of work, now is a 
good moment in which to begin cultivating it. 
After one has practiced personal evangelism 
for years, he may find unexpected opportu- 
nities for immediate victories, but usually he 
will select the object of his endeavor, 41ay siege 
to him and labor long for success. In fifteen 
years of this kind of work, I have brought 
in twenty-five after whom I deliberately went 
out, to every one whom I succeeded in win- 
ning without planning my campaign. 

Begin by deciding to go at it, and make the 
decision irrevocable. Then get out your church 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 91 

constituency list, and make up a smaller list 
of not more than six or eight whom you will 
make your immediate prospects. Write their 
names in your address book. Then make 
another longer list of more remote prospects 
and, on winning one of the first list, imme- 
diately transfer a name from this second list 
to take his place. Always keep a half dozen 
on the smaller list. Now, do not rush out and 
tell those whose names you have on your list 
that you have decided to win them to the 
Christian life. Do not immediately tell any- 
one but God. Begin at once to work out a 
plan of campaign. First study your pros- 
pects, get well acquainted with them, and do 
not let them become suspicious that you are 
planning to preach to them in private. Let 
them feel at ease with you, so that you may 
get deep into their secret hearts. 

This lesson was forcibly impressed upon me 
a few years ago. I was greatly flattered be- 
cause a gentleman in my community, who 
did not belong to my church or congregation, 
but was an earnest worker in another church, 
sought opportunity on every occasion to ride 
or walk with me. We talked on every subject, 
discussed our churches, the business world, the 



92 RURAL EVANGELISM 

war, everything in general. Six months went 
by, and then one evening this man called me 
to the phone and said, "Doctor, I want to 
come over and have a chat with you this 
evening. Will you be at home?" 

"Sure! Come right over. Glad to see you." 

"Well, Doctor," he said, "I must tell you 
before I come that I want to talk to you about 
life insurance. You may not know it, but I am 
the champion life insurance agent of Boston." 

And because he had been such a gentleman, 
though I had long before decided I should take 
out no more life insurance, I told him to come 
over. My pride suffered a bit, as I awaited 
his arrival, for I saw that I had been not so 
much a friend sought as a prospect studied. 
Though I had fortified myself against his 
every argument before he arrived, because he 
knew me so thoroughly he came very near to 
writing me for five thousand dollars of in- 
surance. If a life insurance agent can devote 
six months of careful study to a prospect who 
at most will bring him only a few dollars, what 
ought we to do who capture men's souls for 
eternity? 

Study your prospect. Study him a long 
time, if necessary, and do not lose him by 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 93 

allowing your enthusiasm to run away with 
you. Speak only when you feel sure you are 
ready to speak. Then do not employ any de- 
ception. Be as frank as the insurance agent 
was with me. Give your friend an opportunity 
to prevent the interview if he chooses to do so. 
Not in one case in a thousand will he avoid it. 
Rather he will welcome it, since he has come 
to know you as thoroughly as you know him. 
Here is a case in point. A few years ago 
a carpenter attended my church occasionally, 
whose wife attended regularly and desired to 
unite with us but thought best to wait for her 
husband. That was a challenge to me. His 
name went down on my small list of prospects. 
For three months, at least once a week, I 
either rode or walked with him to or from his 
work, and we became good friends. I had 
learned the carpenter's trade, so that we had 
much in common. Finally I thought I knew 
him and the point of easiest approach. Early 
one morning I called him up and said, "John, 
I want to call at your house to-morrow evening, 
if you'll be at home, and have a real talk 
with you. I want to do my duty by you as 
your pastor, and help you to Christian faith. 
How about it? May I come?" 



94 RURAL EVANGELISM 

For a moment there was a little stammering. 
But I had been square with him, had been his 
friend and he mine, and I had shown that I 
would not force the subject of religion upon 
him without his consent. I knew he would 
not deny me, and that if he consented to my 
visit it was equivalent to an invitation to help 
him become a Christian. So he finally said 
with hearty sincerity, "Why, sure, Pastor. 
Come right over and I'll be here. Guess it's 
about time somebody lined me up, and I'd 
prefer that it should be you." 

An hour later John's wife called up Mrs. 
Wagner and told her that I was to call at their 
house that evening, and asked her to come 
with me, for both of us to come early and have 
supper with them. Of course she accepted. 
It was a fine supper, and Mrs. Wagner, who 
knows how to do team work, insisted when 
it was over that they immediately clear the 
table and wash the dishes. That left John 
and me alone, and we wasted no time. I 
knew what his excuses might be and how to 
get at his heart, for I knew most of his life 
story. I had learned it in our rides and walks 
together. Soon the barriers were all down and 
tears filled his eyes. We had just prayed 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 95 

through as the women came in from the other 
room, and he arose with that light in his face 
which shines only out of a heart that has 
found God, and with trembling voice said: 
"Bertha, I — I have just been converted, and 
I want to join the church. Won't you join 
with me?" It does me good yet to recall her 
glad cry as her arms went round his neck. 
There was little said for a while, and then 
Bertha exclaimed, "John, I have been waiting 
for you to join the church ever since we were 
married, and I was almost giving up." 

He had not been baptized. We telephoned 
for a number of his friends to come in, and an 
hour or so later, there in his home I baptized 
him and took him into the church on proba- 
tion. I like to do that — lead a man to Christ 
at his own home altar, baptize him there, and 
then say to him, "Now you have a family 
altar. I hope you will never give it up but 
will pray here with your family every day." 
I am confident that John would not be in the 
church now if I had depended on my preach- 
ing to get him there, or if I had not taken time 
to study him before I tried to win him. 

One summer, over in the Adirondacks, I 
fished a trout pool many mornings for a great 



96 RURAL EVANGELISM 

old trout which lay in deep water under the 
bank. I knew he was there, for I had seen 
him on several occasions. For two weeks 
every day but Sunday I tempted him with 
every lure and device known to the fisher- 
man's art, and never so much as secured a 
rise from him. Then I decided to spend a 
day studying him. At earliest dawn I crept 
noiselessly to the bank above his lair, shaded 
W eyes and waited. An horn" passed, two 
hours, and nothing happened. Slowly the sun 
rose; still there was no movement. The stream 
came into the pool over shallow ripples only 
a few yards above me. Growing weary of my 
fruitless gazing into the deep water, just after 
sunrise I glanced up at the ripples, and saw a 
small trout, apparently in distress, hurt in 
some way, feebly attempting to swim against 
the current. I was wondering if some fisher- 
men had hooked the little fellow and then 
thrown him back as under size, when like a 
flash the old king of the pool darted through 
the water, snapped up the struggling fingerling, 
and as quickly darted back to his lair. My 
breath stopped and cold sweat stood on my 
forehead as, upon my discovery, I backed 
carefully away from the bank. 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 97 

At a safe distance I breathed again and 
berated the old cannibal. I was so excited 
I could hardly keep my fingers steady as I 
arranged my tackle to whip a shallow place 
some distance below where I was sure to 
hook a small trout. In twenty minutes I had 
him. In three more I had changed leaders, 
had on a stout hook with my small trout, 
still very much alive, tied securely to it by a 
bit of silk thread, and flung him in the water 
up stream among the ripples. How my pulse 
jumped as I led my bait down through the 
ripples to the deeper water. Darting this way 
and that but unable to escape, it made a 
desperate fight. I did not have to wait long. 
Through the grass I saw a flash as the old 
cannibal responded to the lure. I slacked 
line and reel, let him take his prize back into 
his den with him so that he would get hook 
and bait deep into his gullet. Then I gave a 
slight snap and the fight was on. And such 
a fight it was! It ended with the great trout 
lying on the grass at my feet quivering his last. 
He had rebuffed me many times, laughed at 
me, ridiculed me, insulted me, but I had not 
given him up until he was mine. I studied 
him, dreamed about him, found out his secret 



98 RURAL EVANGELISM 

and landed him. Shall I not use as much 
sagacity and persistence in dealing with men? 

How many experiences of this sort I recall, 
only they were in catching men instead of 
trout! For example, there was Donald Ross. 
When I went to that pastorate he was not 
attending church. He and the leading mem- 
ber of the church and official board were not 
on speaking terms, though his name was on 
the church book. His business was such that 
it was natural for me to come in contact with 
him two or three times a week, and I missed 
no opportunity to be with him. Not once 
for three months did I mention the church or 
his trouble with my prominent official. But 
at last I knew his vulnerable spots. There 
were two of them. His mother, who was grow- 
ing old, grieved because she went to church 
alone, and that troubled him. His little son 
was twelve years of age and thought his father 
the greatest man in the world. Donald did 
not want his boy to grow up out of the church, 
as he was living. He had been really con- 
verted and remembered it. 

I chose Thursday for my visit to Donald, 
because it was his day of greatest leisure. 
I went in as usual and waited until he was 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 99 

alone, when I said frankly, "Donald, I have 
come to talk religion and church to you. I 
want you to go with me down to the basement 
and give me a fair chance to talk it out with 
you. Come on." 

He held back at first as he said, "Now, 
Dominie, it's been fine to be friends with you, 
but better let me alone on this subject. You 
know I can't go back to church with that old 
hypocrite you have there." But he did come, 
as I knew he would. 

We talked that day, or, rather, he did, for 
two hours, getting everything off his mind. 
Beginning with bitterness he passed to the 
humorous and the pathetic, and at last had 
no more to say. Then I put my finger on his 
first soft spot. I said, "Donald, doesn't it make 
you a little heart-sick to see your old mother 
going off to church alone every Sunday?" 

He started and grew red, and then said 
rather bitterly, "That's not fair, Dominie. 
That's hitting below the belt. You know it 
hurts; but what can I do about it?" 

"Why, man, go with her," I replied. With- 
out waiting, I went on: "And, Donald, are 
you going to let Lawrence, your boy, grow up 
feeling as you do toward the church and re- 



100 RURAL EVANGELISM 

ligion? Do you want him to be the kind of 
man your attitude will naturally make him?" 

His eyes were full of tears as he said, "But 
what can I do?" 

"First, let's pray about it," I replied. "If 
you will do that, with the will to do whatever 
is right, you will find the way." 

At last he stammered out a prayer, and 
presently looked up at me with a smile. "It's 
all right, Dominie," he said. "I'll go the whole 
route, or die." 

A little later he stood up in the church where 
he and this church member had quarreled, 
made an apology, asked the man's forgiveness, 
although he was no more in the wrong than 
the other, and the two shook hands and for- 
got their grievances. But that would never 
have taken place had I not taken plenty of 
time to study my prospect. In an argument 
he would have held his own, and mere ex- 
hortation would have achieved nothing. 

Then there was the case of John Lee, though 
that is not his real name any more than Donald 
was the name of the other. He did not attend 
my church or any church. I met him in a 
lodge to which both of us belonged, and where 
we had done some work together. About the 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 101 

only reason a minister can have for belonging 
to a lodge is to get acquainted with men whom 
he may lead to a higher brotherhood, a better 
fraternity. Well, during a period of about 
six months, Mr. Lee and I became very well 
acquainted, and it was impressed upon my 
conscience that if he was ever to be converted 
it would have to be through my instrumen- 
tality. He went down on my list. Soon I 
went to see him in his fine office over the 
leading bank of the city. I brought up the 
matter of religion at once, only to have it 
waved aside in a courteous way with the 
statement that he had settled that matter 
many years before and did not care to take 
it up again. My call was short, but as I left 
I said, "I should like to call again some day, 
Mr. Lee. You might change your mind in 
this matter, you know/ 5 He told me to come 
at my pleasure, and I went my way. 

Regularly thereafter every other month for 
three years I called at his office, and each time, 
if I found him in, I spoke an earnest word for 
Jesus Christ. If he was not in, I left a brief 
note, with a similar message about our Lord.. 
At the end of those three years I took up my 
pen one day to cross off his name from my 



102 RURAL EVANGELISM 

little book as hopeless, but changed my mind. 
I decided to make one more effort, since the 
following week was the time for my call. 

The next Sunday morning I was to preach 
a sermon on the idea that if one does not 
strive to live up to his convictions, or attempt 
to attain to his own moral ideals, he is his own 
enemy and is blighting his own soul. Just 
before time to begin the sermon I saw Mr. 
Lee come into the church. There was no 
seat for him down stairs, so the ushers con- 
ducted him to the balcony, where they found a 
seat for him near the center of the front sec- 
tion. When the sermon began I promptly 
forgot his presence, but the Lord helped me 
to preach with conviction and some power. 
The closing hymn was "A charge to keep I 
have, a God to glorify," and before we began 
to sing, although it was the morning service, 
1 asked for penitents to come forward to the 
altar. No sooner had we started to sing than 
Mr. Lee began to make his way out of the 
pew and down the side stairs before that 
great audience, to the altar, where he made 
his confession, was baptized and received into 
the church. He said: "Brethren, no sermon 
could have led me to do this. I heard all the 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM 103 

great preachers years ago and they failed to 
move me. But for three years a man who 
probably would not care to have me mention 
his name called regularly at my office to ask me 
to be a Christian. I could not stand that steady 
siege. I came to church this morning with no 
notion of making this confession, but in the hope 
that it would satisfy my conscience, and I heard 
that for all these years I have been my own 
worst enemy in the blighting of my character. 
Here I stand and, if God will forgive me, I 
want to be of use to him and to this church." 

To multiply cases would be easy, each case 
representative of a class. But these are suffi- 
cient. Let no one say he cannot do such 
work. Every man can do it, if he has Christ 
in his life. It will not be easy to decide to do 
it. It will not be easy to begin it. But we 
are not here simply to do easy things; we are 
here to do the needed things, and this is one 
of them. No man's ministry is complete unless 
it includes this work and the enlistment of 
others in it also. It requires courage, per- 
sistence, tact, zeal, and love for God and souls. 
Any man who has all these but lacks tact 
can, if he will, develop that faculty, and so 
win as a personal worker. 



CHAPTER VI 

PASTORAL CALLING AND 
EVANGELISM 

A good many years ago, when I was pastor 
in an Oklahoma town, two families which 
were social rivals lived almost opposite one 
another on the same street. One afternoon 
in my pastoral rounds, I ended my calling 
for that day in one of these homes, but did 
not reach the other. The next day for some 
reason I began work in another part of the 
community and did not return to that street 
for several weeks. Within a short time I 
noticed a coolness on the part of the woman 
in whose home I had failed to call, and later 
heard that she was out of humor about some- 
thing, but being very busy I soon forgot about 
it. Later on, an official member said to me 
that Mrs. B. was quite indignant about some- 
thing I had done, and threatened not to come 
to church any more. I hastened immediately 
to her home to find out what was the diffi- 

104 



PASTORAL CALLING 105 

culty. At first she was very reserved and 
refused to say what was the matter, but finally 
said, "Why, you were on this street a few weeks 
ago and called on Mrs. S. and left me out. 
The neighbors all saw you there and thought 
you had purposely slighted me, and it was 
very embarrassing to be cut that way." Un- 
wittingly I had been the means of tilting the 
social scales in Mrs. S's favor and could not 
be forgiven until I had restored the balance 
by calling on Mrs. B. 

Having straightened that out, I went my 
way in some disgust, but feeling at least that 
I had saved the day, only to be told soon 
afterward that Mrs. S. was indignant about 
something. As soon as I could I hurried to 
her house, and she informed me that I had 
recently called on Mrs. B., and the neighbors 
were all wondering if I had cut her off my 
calling list, since I had not called on her at 
the same time. In order to keep the peace 
in that community, I dared Hot call on one 
of those families without calling also on the 
other the same day. I was being used as a 
sort of social lever. I did not succeed in be- 
coming particularly popular with either family, 
nor were my calls especially desired. I was 



106 RURAL EVANGELISM 

obliged to treat both families exactly alike to 
avoid trouble. 

This is an extreme case, but I wonder if 
every pastor has not heard complaints about 
his neglect of this or that family because he 
had called less frequently there than some- 
where else. In every case such complaints 
grow out of the idea that the minister's calls 
are purely social, and if that view were cur- 
rent, such complaints would have some justi- 
fication. 

If a pastor's chief desire is to be a "good 
mixer," and to have his people so regard him, 
his calling is apt to be a purely social affair. 
I do not regard such an epithet as compli- 
mentary unless I am able, through social 
contacts, to turn my work as a pastor to better 
account. A good mixer may be a good pastor, 
but he will have continually to fight the tempta- 
tion to let his visits dwindle into the shallowest 
social intercourse. 

Why should a minister call from house to 
house? Surely not merely to keep his people 
from thinking he neglects them! He scarcely 
need occupy many hours each week in such 
negative work. Does not the value of pastoral 
calling inhere in the pastoral relationship? Is 



PASTORAL CALLING 107 

any call worthy the name of pastoral which 
does not aim to do for some one something 
which it is a pastor's duty to do? Then a 
pastoral call may be defined in terms of what 
it is a pastor's duty to do for his people. If 
it is his duty to be a social light among them, 
to pass around his calls as if they were social 
favors; or if his chief mission is to gratify his 
people and keep them good-natured, regard- 
less of how they are living, the pastor's calls 
will tend to be light and frivolous. But if 
it is a pastor's duty to help his people to be 
good, to have faith in God and to know God, 
to love the church and to be faithful in its 
service, to comfort such as mourn and to 
strengthen the weak, then a pastoral call must 
always keep such ends in view, and in some 
way seek to accomplish them. 

There is no virtue in perfunctory pastoral 
calls, made simply for the sake of the report 
at Quarterly Conference. Such calls are a 
burden to the pastor and of no value to the 
church. They burden the pastor because his 
aim is unworthy and it seems to be useless 
work. Is there no remedy for this evil? Must 
ministers go on thus wasting their time? If 
pastoral calling is made what it should be, is 



108 RURAL EVANGELISM 

linked up with evangelism, organized, planned, 
it can be made a joy to the pastor and a bless- 
ing to the church. 

A pastor in a new field should begin his call- 
ing at once. Not later than the second Sunday 
in his new pulpit he should announce that he 
will begin his pastoral visitation the following 
day on some particular street, and that during 
the week he will call on other streets which 
he then should name; or, if it is a country place, 
he will designate the roads he will follow. 
He will assume that the visiting list prepared 
for him by his predecessor is correct, and 
will follow it in his first round. If the retiring 
pastor did his duty, he left a visiting list which 
gives the name and address of each family, 
with the names and ages and birthdays of 
the children, and indicating who are members 
of the church. Usually this information is 
not furnished, but at least street addresses 
may be assumed to be correct. The new 
pastor should provide himself with a loose- 
leaf notebook, and before starting out each 
day should write the name of each family he 
is to visit that afternoon at the top of a page, 
allowing an entire page for each family record. 
He will have one fixed purpose in this first 



PASTORAL CALLING 109 

round, and he will stick to that purpose as 
tenaciously as an insurance agent sticks to 
his. He will get acquainted with his people, 
and do it in the most direct way possible. 

At about two o'clock he will stop at the first 
address on the first street on his list. Possi- 
bly the lady of the house was not at church 
either the previous Sunday or the week before, 
and will not know him. He will forestall her 
turning him away by quickly making himself 
known, and will soon be admitted by an 
embarrassed woman trying to make excuses 
for not having been at church for two Sundays. 
He will set her at ease very quickly, and at 
once proceed to business. Taking out his 
loose-leaf book, he will tell the lady his sole 
purpose in this round is to find out all he can 
about his people. He will know nothing 
about this family, and will ask questions to 
help in getting acquainted. Probably his first 
questions, pencil in hand, will be what her 
husband's initials are, what his business is, 
and what is his business address. Next he 
will ask for the names and ages of the chil- 
dren, including their birthdays. Then he will 
inquire who in the family are members of the 
church. Of course he could get that informa- 



110 RURAL EVANGELISM 

tion from the church record, but it will do the 
family much more good and be fully as well 
for him to get it directly from the father or 
mother. If the lady replies that she is the 
only church member in the family, and if 
she has children above nine or ten years of 
age, it gives the pastor opportunity to offer 
to try to help her win her family for Christ 
and the church. This puts her on record as 
desiring and willing to work to that end. 
When he is leaving, which will be immediately 
on completing his record, the new pastor will 
say, especially if* he is afflicted as I am — "Now, 
Mrs. Jones, the next time I see you I will 
know I have met you and that I ought to 
know you, but I will probably not know your 
name. Won't you help me a very great deal 
by saying as soon as we meet, 'I am Mrs. 
Jones 5 ? That will greatly help me. Thank 
you. Good afternoon/' 

"What," says some pastor, "not offer 
prayer?" Well, that depends. If Mrs. Jones 
invites it, or acts as if she would appreciate 
it, or you feel in your heart you ought to do 
it, then have prayer. Otherwise, wait until 
Mrs. Jones knows you well enough to want 
you to pray for her, before volunteering to 



PASTORAL CALLING 111 

do so. The longer I stay in a pastorate, the 
more places I pray in my calling, but in my 
first round I pray mostly as I go to and from 
the homes. To offer prayer in a home may 
not do as much good as to pray on the walk 
in front of it before you go in. I do not know 
that offering a prayer aloud in a home will 
help it any more than a prayer offered silently 
out on the walk. Of course, if what is desired 
is to have Mrs. Jones hear your prayer, why, 
by all means pray; only remember that Jesus 
said that they who pray for that reason "have 
their reward," which intimates that they need 
expect no more. The chief object of this first 
visit is to get acquainted. 

If the new pastor sticks to his object, he 
will get over the ground quite rapidly, but 
will be so busy that he will do little else in 
addition to his sermon preparation. But when 
he has been in every home in his parish, he 
will take his loose-leaf notebook and will take 
plenty of time thoroughly to digest all the 
information he has gathered. He should then 
make a list of all the brothers-in-law and 
another of all the sisters-in-law to the church; 
another for all the children of Christian parents, 
arranging them by ages as well as by streets, 



112 RURAL EVANGELISM 

and he should make a list of such families as 
are of Christian faith, but are not in any way 
attached to the church. When that is done, 
he will know his field. He will have added 
to his street list several families whom he has 
discovered by inquiring in each home whether 
there are other families near whom he should 
visit, and these he will properly look after. 

By this time he knows his members, his 
constituency, his field for work, and his pros- 
pects of success. I always feel a distinct 
elation after this first round, if I find a good 
many brothers-in-law to the church, or a good 
many children of Christian homes not in the 
membership of the church. Here is my field 
for cultivation, and I welcome it. 

When this is done, and not until then, let 
the pastor call in half a dozen men whom he 
knows to be interested and who are acquainted 
with the people of the community, and with 
them go over his constituency list and get 
what help he can in estimating his material, 
and determining his immediate program of 
pastoral visitation. At this meeting or a 
similar one, the plans suggested in the chapter 
on "An Evangelistic Program" should be dis- 
cussed. Just now we are concerned only in 



PASTORAL CALLING 113 

the pastor's attempts to make plans for his 
parish calls. After such an evening, studying 
family after family, individual after individual, 
the pastor will know much better where to 
begin his efforts to win men to Christian 
discipleship. 

Let us assume that this pastor is a member 
of a Spring Conference. By the time his first 
round of calling is completed, summer is at 
hand, and by September the pastor's constitu- 
ency list is perfected. As complete a study 
as possible of his material has been made, 
and plans determined upon for his second 
round. The other features of his church 
program will harmonize with these plans and 
all will be made to focus upon some definite 
thing which he wishes to accomplish early in 
the season. For example, since the chief work 
of a church is evangelism, the subject which 
we are considering, we will assume that he 
wishes to make that the supreme object of 
his effort in the early fall and winter. He 
will focus his sermon-building, his calling and 
his prayer meetings upon that objective, and 
will urge the Sunday school teaching force and 
church in general to join him in that endeavor. 
The chief weakness of pastoral effort is, in 



114 RURAL EVANGELISM 

many cases, lack of unity. One thing is sought 
through sermons, another thing through the 
prayer meeting, another in the Sunday school, 
and still another through pastoral visitation, 
so that there is no decisive and unified cam- 
paign for any definite victory. And for its 
own stimulus and spiritual tonic a church 
needs an occasional victory. How can it be 
won without a definite effort being made to 
attain a definite end? Let the pastor plan 
his work with this fact in mind and he will 
see larger accomplishment. 

Again, from the pulpit or through the church 
calendar on the previous Sunday, the pastor 
will name the streets on which he will call 
during the week, and then will hold to his 
schedule. This time he is out to win people 
to Christ and the church, or at least to make 
a beginning in that direction. He began his 
last round, let us suppose, in the Jones family, 
where there are four children, all above ten 
years of age, and where Mrs. Jones is the 
only member of the church. By reference to 
the Sunday school records, he has found that 
the two elder Jones children do not regularly 
attend Sunday school; and from the ushers 
that Mr. Jones does not attend either church 



PASTORAL CALLING 115 

or Sunday school; and that Mrs. Jones is her- 
self very irregular in church attendance and 
never attends prayer meeting. 

He is now beginning his second round at 
the same home, has planned his campaign and 
has a definite object to attain on this second 
visit. Evidently, unless there are circum- 
stances not revealed on the surface, either 
Mr. Jones has the stronger influence over the 
family and is actively opposed to the church, 
or else Mrs. Jones is not very active in her 
own Christian life. Something must be done. 
The pastor will not hesitate to attempt to 
do his duty. What is needed is not so 
much for the minister to pray in such a home 
as to get some one already in the home to 
praying. 

After kindly greetings, the pastor begins by 
saying that he wants to be a real help to Mrs. 
Jones in bringing her family into the church, 
and that he has been wondering what would 
be the best way to go about it. He tells her 
he has found that the elder children seem to 
be dropping out of Sunday school, while they 
seldom, if ever, attend church service or Ep- 
worth League. The reason for that must be 
found and removed, he assures her, before 



116 RURAL EVANGELISM 

they can be led to faith. He reminds her that 
the other children are regularly at Sunday 
school. 

At this point he gives Mrs. Jones oppor- 
tunity to make whatever explanation or excuse 
she cares to offer. Then, without the least 
indication of impertinence, the fact that Mrs. 
Jones herself does not attend prayer meeting, 
is irregular at church, and that Mr. Jones is 
never present may be brought out, with the 
suggestion from the pastor that perhaps she 
would be there if she could, and that he is 
wondering if there is anything he can do to 
attract Mr. Jones to the church. He will seek 
to make Mrs. Jones feel that the salvation of 
her family depends largely upon her own 
efforts and example, but that he is eager to 
help. He offers to see Mr. Jones and the girls 
personally, or to call at the home some evening 
when all will be there. He will, of course, 
pray for them, but he points out that his 
efforts will fail unless they are reenf orced by a 
sincere desire and effort on her part. He 
urges that her own more regular attendance 
at church and at least occasional attendance at 
prayer meeting, with such help as she can 
give in interesting the rest of the family, is 



PASTORAL CALLING 117 

very necessary for any sort of success. Thus, 
two things will be accomplished: the good 
woman will be made to feel her own respon- 
sibility, and that in living up to it she is to 
have real help. 

At another home, where every one eligible 
to church membership is a member, and 
where there is some ability and disposition 
for service, the pastor may express gratification 
at their regularity at the church services, his 
appreciation of their willingness to work, and 
then give to them one or two names of people 
on his list of most hopeful prospective mem- 
bers with the request that they try to win 
them to Christ. When he is leaving he may 
remark: "You may see me pass your house 
quite frequently when I shall not stop. My 
work and time must be given to people who 
need me most. You know Christ said, 'They 
that are whole need not a physician, but they 
that are sick/ and so I shall often pass you 
by. I hope you will take it as a compliment 
that I do so." By following this method in 
such homes, a pastor will have an increasing 
number of families who take pride in being 
able to do without pastoral visitation except 
when something special is wanted of him. 



118 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Even then, a letter will often take the place 
of a call. 

Each day, before starting out, a pastor 
should study the list of families where he is 
to call that day and plan his visit to each of 
them. He will know the needs of these homes 
and what opportunities they offer for minis- 
try, and will have a distinct object in each 
visit. In one there is no church paper, in an- 
other no one attends prayer meeting, in another 
there is some one who ought to teach a Sunday 
school class, in another the children are losing 
their interest in Sunday school, and in an- 
other he proposes to leave the name of a 
prospective church member who shall be 
their special charge and ward. Each day, on 
returning from his work, all the information 
gathered will be carefully recorded. Children 
not in Sunday school and new comers will 
be immediately reported to the proper teacher, 
or membership secretary, and new families will 
be reported to the visitation committee. The 
aim of this visitation will be, in general, evan- 
gelism — winning people for Christ and the 
church — but a variety of methods will be 
used, the proper method being suited to each 
family. Such work is a fascinating and ex- 



PASTORAL CALLING 119 

hilarating exercise, and will lead to sure vic- 
tory. 

In later visitations the pastor will maintain 
the evangelistic aim, but he may give special 
attention to some definite need or phase of 
church work in each home. For example, his 
first visit is to get acquainted, to gather in- 
formation; his second is to begin work for 
accessions and to assign work to others; his 
third will continue this, but may lay emphasis 
on good literature in the home; the fourth may 
have particularly to do with Sunday school, 
or prayer meeting, or the evening service; 
another visit may aim to develop sociability, 
to see that socially isolated families and indi- 
viduals are brought to the attention of those 
who will help to get them into church fellow- 
ship. In one church I made an entire round 
of visitation, mentioning in each home half a 
dozen excellent families who had fallen into the 
habit of never going to church, and whom I 
wished very much to bring back, I just men- 
tioned them and suggested in a few places 
ways in which they could help. By the end 
of the visitation four of the families were back 
in the church, and all of them but one were 
active within a short time. 



120 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Just here let me say a word or two of the 
way in which a live pastor may relate his 
pastoral visitation to his evening service. What 
is the chief purpose of his pastoral calling? 
To win converts? Then to urge those whom 
he seeks to win to attend the evening service 
will help, providing the evening service is made 
distinctly evangelistic. Without being too per- 
sonal in his preaching, one may nevertheless 
be able to answer every question raised by 
those visited during the week. I recall one 
period of nearly three months of my ministry 
when at every evening service there were 
confessions at the altar of the church, and in 
every instance those who came were the fruit- 
age of my efforts during the preceding week. 
Visitation and Sunday evening sermon work 
well together. I cannot urge this method too 
strongly. 

A good many years ago a young college 
student pastor was appointed to a small coun- 
try village charge in the West, where he found 
that his constituency were entirely wealthy or 
retired farmers. His college work was heavy 
and kept him away from home so much of 
the time, the college being in another town, 
that he was unable to do more during nine 



PASTORAL CALLING 121 

months of the year than look after the sick 
and aged and to prepare his sermons. The 
remaining three months were the busiest of 
the year for his parishioners, and yet during 
those months he must do a year's pastoral 
visiting. He decided that, since he was reared 
in the country and knew how to farm, his best 
way was to call with a hoe, a plow or a pitch 
fork. It was what in the corn belt is called 
a backward season, and many farmers were 
behind with their work. He consulted two 
leading laymen, retired farmers, who lived in 
the village, and secured their help. These two 
agreed to find out each Sunday who in the 
congregation was most in need of help, and to 
report to the pastor at the close of the service. 
When the pastor that morning greeted the 
farmer most in need of help, he would say: 
"Have an extra hoe ready about seven in the 
morning. I'm coming out to hoe for you. I 
hope your chickens are fat, too, Mrs. Belmot, 
for hoeing always makes me hungry." Soon 
another would pass out and he would say: 
"Have an extra pitchfork ready in the hay 
field Wednesday morning, Brother Wyant. 
I'll be out by seven o'clock to help you for 
a couple of days with your haying. Mrs. 



122 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Wyant, you have no idea how fond I am of 
hot apple pie." Everyone would be a bit 
envious of the two families singled out in this 
way for momentary attention, but glad for 
them, and they said to themselves, "He's a 
real man/ 5 

They soon found their pastor was as good a 
farmer as he was a preacher; that he needed 
no sympathy when he worked; and that if 
several men were on the job a zest and swing, 
a jollity and good will were added to the work 
when he arrived which made everyone accom- 
plish more than on other days. Some one 
would take him back to the village in the 
evening, where, after the deep sleep of physical 
weariness, he would awake with a vigor and 
relish for work equal to any farmer. He worked 
at least four days of each week. By August, 
when threshing began, he had done at least 
one day's work on every farm in his parish. 

The day threshing began, he was early at 
the threshing place and ready for work. Every 
farmer in that vicinity knew that he liked a 
joke as well as any of them, and they began 
jokingly to boast that they would put the 
preacher on the strawstack and "snow him 
under" before noon. No one really expected 



PASTORAL CALLING 123 

him to go on the strawstack, the hardest place 
around the thresher. But it happened that in 
his home community he had been the champion 
strawstack builder, and he accepted the assign- 
ment with a jolly laugh, and would not give 
it up when others suggested an easier place 
for him. It was his first experience with a 
blow stacker, and for a time he was at a loss 
to know how to shape his work, but he soon 
found a way. What a day of toil and sweat 
and leg-weariness it was! But not for the 
farm would he have shown the white feather 
or called for help. When night came the job 
was done, and the entire community gathered 
about the strawstack, as the tired and be- 
grimed preacher slid to the ground, and gave 
him a hearty cheer. Four days a week for 
three weeks he spent on the strawstack, until 
he grew to be as expert at managing the blow 
stacker as he had been in managing the carrier 
stacker. 

Then, one Thursday noon, the wealthiest 
man in the community, who was neither church 
member nor church attendant, came to him 
and said, "Dominie, they go to my place 
to-night. I want you to build my stack to- 
morrow." 



124 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Now the pastor had uniformly refused to 
work on Friday, reserving that and the fol- 
lowing day for sermon preparation and for 
pastoral work in the village, so he replied: 
"But I don't work on Friday and Saturday. 
I've got to try to keep some of these wicked 
neighbors of yours from going to the bad, 
you know/ 5 

The men standing around began to laugh, 
but the farmer grinned as he said, "Come 
on now, Dominie. Fve got to have as good a 
stack as any Methodist, and if I'm to get it, 
you must build it for me. Come on. I'll give 
you four dollars to build my stack to-morrow. 
Let the sermon go for once." 

It had been the pastor's plan if anyone 
offered to pay him for a day or two of work, 
to say: "No. My time belongs to the church. 
You can put what my work is worth into the 
benevolent collection." He replied, therefore, 
to the farmer's proposal: "Sorry, but money 
doesn't count in this case. I must get those 
sermons." 

After increasing his offer to six dollars and 
being refused, the farmer, feeling that he must 
win out, and taking a good deal of pleasure 
in the contest with the preacher in the presence 



PASTORAL CALLING 125 

of his neighbors, exclaimed: "Now I'm going 
to see if you are as good a sport as you are 
stack builder. I don't know a thing about 
your preaching, for I don't go to church, but 
you are going to build that stack if you have 
any sporting blood in you. I'll let you set 
your own price. Build that stack and I'll 
pay the penalty whatever it is. My neighbors 
will tell you I live up to my word, even if I 
don't go to church. Now then, how about it?" 

The preacher saw his opening and took it. 
"I'll go you on that, sir. You may put what- 
ever you think my work is worth in the col- 
lection at the church when the benevolences 
are taken about a month from now, and, in 
addition, you and your family all be at church at 
half -past ten next Sunday morning. You want 
me to come to see you; you come to see me." 

For a moment there was silence, and then 
the farmers began to laugh, and even to shout 
their glee, for their neighbor was well known 
for his witticisms at the expense of church- 
going people. He was game, however, and in 
a moment turned to the crowd and said with 
mock anger, "Shut up, you unmannerly Rubes. 
Don't you know how to behave when my 
preacher comes to see me? I'll be at church 



126 RURAL EVANGELISM 

next Sunday to see how many of you fellows 
stick to your preacher as well as I do to mine.' 5 

His was the largest stack-building job in the 
community. Work began at sunrise the next 
morning, and ended barely before dark, but 
the great semicircular stack was finished, and 
when the preacher slid to the ground his legs 
would hardly hold him and his feet were so 
sore he could scarcely walk. He was tired 
to the point of exhaustion — too tired to eat 
the supper prepared for the workmen at nine 
o'clock that evening. 

The farmer was as good as his word and 
the next Sunday morning he and his family 
were at church. To-day they are not only 
members but pillars in that church, and six 
farmers 5 families, besides many others, joined 
the church in the early fall because while 
building strawstacks, haystacks, or plowing 
corn, the pastor had not lost sight of the main 
purpose of a pastoral visit. He had visited 
in over-alls and brogans, with a pitchfork or 
hoe, but he had won people for God and the 
church. Not the form but the object sought, 
and the fidelity and skill with which that 
object is attained, make a call worthy the 
name "pastoral visit." 



CHAPTER VII 
AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 

Pastors, laymen, district superintendents, 
and bishops have been heard recently to 
complain of "handed-down" programs. It is 
even threatened in some quarters that there 
will be rebellion if there are more of them. 
There have been programs, it is true, of every 
sort "handed down" and from every quarter. 
Some of them overlap, indicating that our 
leaders have not always planned in unison. 
It is not possible successfully to put on two 
programs at the same time, each of them 
requiring two services a week and using all of 
a pastor's available time. 

But have distressed and hurried pastors 
stopped to think that probably, if not surely, 
this "programming" from above is due to 
failure on the part of pastor and people to have 
any definite program of their own? I have 
been a pastor for twenty-six years, have never 
occupied any other position, and I speak from 
experience and observation when I say that 

127 



128 RURAL EVANGELISM 

nothing in these twenty-six years past has so 
stimulated the church, so stirred pastors and 
official boards to the adoption of definite pro- 
grams for their local churches, as have these 
"handed-down" programs so much complained 
of. Let us complain at them less and learn 
from them more, and follow with open-minded- 
ness the way they lead. 

In giving these lectures in more than a 
dozen institutes to nearly fifteen hundred pas- 
tors, I have uniformly asked this question: 
"Who of you has a Committee on Evangelism? 
Raise your hands/' Not more than ten per 
cent have responded in the affirmative. The 
next question has always been, "Who of you 
has a Finance Committee? Show your hands," 
and not less than ninety per cent have raised 
their hands. This can mean only one thing: 
the church, as a working force, has some 
kind of financial program, but no evangelistic 
program. The pastor may have a plan of his 
own and may be trying to work it out; but 
the church has none and therefore is not 
working at evangelism in any definite way. 
The term "program" may be overworked, but 
the idea back of the term is scarcely being 
realized in the field of evangelism. Does that 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 129 

appear to be a rash statement? Let us see if 
it is true. 

A program must have in it two elements 
without which there can be no program worthy 
the name. First, there must be a definite 
objective, a desired end, clearly stated and 
earnestly sought; and, second, there must be 
an equally definite plan by which it is proposed 
to attain that objective. The war has made 
us see these two elements of a program very 
clearly. In that great crisis the objective was 
to conquer the Central Powers, to win the 
war. But to achieve that end, lesser objectives 
were sought: so many kilometers advance each 
day, each hour, in a given drive, until some 
larger objective was finally attained. St. 
Mihiel, the Argonne, Chateau Thierry — these 
were set as objectives to be attained by first 
attaining lesser objectives; but there was never 
an advance without a definite objective clearly 
fixed and aimed at. The soldier might sing, 
"Where do we go from here? 5 ' but at least 
his superiors knew where they were headed. 
There was also an equally decisive plan for 
attaining each lesser objective, and all these 
plans together formed the great strategy for 
achieving the final goal. 



130 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Our supreme evangelistic objective is set by 
the command of our Lord, "Go ye . . . and 
disciple all nations." That has not been ac- 
complished by nineteen hundred years of 
effort. It remains our ultimate objective yet 
to be attained. But what have been and what 
are the objectives of the church for this year, 
or this quadrennium, or this decade? What 
has been and what is the definite objective of 
any given church for this same period? The 
Centenary has set Methodism an objective for 
this year — a very definite objective. There are 
not lacking objectors to this definiteness who 
even condemn it. Let us have programs, 
these critics seem to say, but let us avoid 
figures and statistics. But there can be no 
program without a goal. Nor are vague ob- 
jectives, such as "A Revived Church/' "A 
Working Church/ 5 or the slogan, "The whole 
world for Christ," sufficient. For my part I 
glory in the challenge of the leadership of the 
church which has at last set us an objective, 
and is commanding "Forward, march!" for we 
know whither we are marching. 

The slogan, "A Million for Christ," is no 
more than a general objective for a local 
church. One pastor, one church organization, 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 131 

cannot win a million in a year. Even though 
to this challenge my church and I respond, 
"We are with you; we will do our best/' no 
definite goal for our attainment has been set. 
How much is our "best 55 ? Until we settle 
that, our objective is too general for definite 
endeavor. Who knows what is the best a 
local church can do, until it is set at some 
Specific task? Indefiniteness is the weakness — 
I had almost said the sin — of the church* 
For myself and for my church a definite goal 
must be set before we can outline any real 
program. A twenty-five per cent increase in 
membership may not be the proper objective 
for many churches. The constituency of some 
is too small, and of others is too large, for 
that ratio. Ten per cent may be enough for 
the former, while the latter, where a large 
constituency awaits cultivation, should make 
fifty per cent increase. 

In the church of which I am now pastor, dur- 
ing 1912 a gain of a little less than seven per 
cent was made; in each of the three years, 1913 
to 1915, one per cent was lost; while in 1916 
neither gain nor loss was recorded. In the 
Conference year 1917-18 a gain of nearly 
twenty per cent was made, and in the follow- 



132 RURAL EVANGELISM 

ing Conference year again about one per cent 
was lost. Finally in 1919-20, there was a 
gain of more than twenty-five per cent. Thus, 
in a period of eight years, almost exactly a 
fifty per cent gain has been recorded, of which 
one half was made in the past Conference 
year. For the eight years the average gain 
has been six and a half per cent. Almost 
exactly one half that gain has been by letter 
and the other half, or three and a quarter 
per cent, has been from probation. This is 
about in keeping with the general advance of 
the Methodist denomination for this period, and 
therefore, so far as securing conversions goes, 
this is about an average church. It ought to 
be stated, also, that seventy-five per cent of 
the accessions for the past Conference year 
have been by way of probation; or nearly 
twenty per cent in net gain for the year through 
conversion. This gives evidence of a healthy 
condition. 

After a careful study of Quarterly Confer- 
ence, official board and membership records, 
and diligent inquiry among various members 
of the church, no trace of any sort of a def- 
inite evangelistic program has been found 
until the year 1917. On the records of the 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 133 

official board for the early fall of that year 
appears a resolution to the effect that "it 
shall be the objective of the church for this 
year, ending at the next session of Conference* 
April, 1918, to gain a ten per cent increase 
in the membership of the church/' Until that 
year it had been the policy of the church to 
receive into fellowship those who presented 
letters of transfer, and any others who might 
offer themselves for membership, and to bring 
in the children of the Sunday school through, 
a probationers 5 class. But no definite objective 
had been set, and no definite method of evan- 
gelistic endeavor had been adopted. 

The contrast between these methods is 
apparent when it is stated that from 1912 
until 1917 a total gain of only about four and 
one half per cent was made, while in 1918* 
the first year with a program, there was an 
increase of about twenty per cent. In the 
Conference year 1918-19 again no evangelistic 
program was adopted, the church devoting all 
its attention and energy to war work and the 
Centenary, and a loss of one per cent in member- 
ship was sustained. In 1919-20 once more an 
evangelistic program, aiming by definite meth- 
ods to effect a twenty-five per cent increase 



134 RURAL EVANGELISM 

in membership, was adopted, and more than 
that percentage was actually gained early in 
April before Conference. 

It is more than an accident that advance 
in membership by conversion should be uni- 
formly made when there was a definite pro- 
gram, and that a static condition should 
prevail when no such program was being fol- 
lowed. Unhesitatingly I urge every pastor and 
official board to set up a definite objective at 
which they shall aim. Having done that, they 
are ready to begin working out plans for 
success. When an objective has thus been 
determined upon and definite plans have 
been made for attaining it, then, and not till 
then, may a church be said to have a pro- 
gram. 

Many expedients and activities of the church 
have been utterly futile because they aimed 
at nothing. These activities resulted in no 
definite product. Activity, to be moral, must 
have motive, and motive grows out of aims 
ami objective. Activity for its own sake is 
without moral quality. As I have already 
remarked, a machinist might gather wheels, 
belts, journals, cogs, and gear them to power, 
and exclaim as his mountain of machinery 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 135 

began to move, "See what I have built. It 
works! It works!" and at once begin to pro- 
claim his achievement. But careful investiga- 
tion must show something produced or some 
service rendered to justify pride in one's in- 
vention. If there is no product, the machine 
is a failure, no matter how well it works. 
Church machinery must be constructed, not 
with a view to activity, motion, but to product. 
A church and its pastor engaged in endless 
activities do not prove necessarily the existence 
of a program. It takes the product to prove 
that, and the product must be of the kind 
planned for and expected; in other words, 
those who make church plans should aim at 
definite result, and with at least some success 
should achieve it. Tested by this twofold 
standard, not a few church plans must be 
discarded. 

In determining an evangelistic program for 
a local church, then, first fix upon a definite 
objective. It ought to be a sufficiently large 
objective not only to challenge, but even to 
startle, the attention of the church. I have 
previously remarked that every church needs 
an occasional victory for the sake of its own 
spiritual health. But a victory accidentally 



136 RURAL EVANGELISM 

won, or won unexpectedly, only awakens 
curiosity, while a cause championed and at- 
tained after persistent endeavor constitutes a 
real victory. Make the evangelistic aim large 
and keep it before the people. No matter if 
a few timid souls say it can never be attained. 
Such forebodings but challenge the faith of the 
courageous. Get the church to adopt as its 
own the end sought. Get it down on the 
official board records, as well as the records 
of the Sunday school, the Men's Club and the 
Missionary Society, that these organizations 
and, indeed, the church as a whole have started 
somewhere, a very definite somewhere. 

Before the objective is definitely fixed, a 
wise pastor will have specific plans worked out 
for attaining it. His plan will be developed 
in considerable detail, leaving room, however, 
for initiative on the part of his helpers. Imme- 
diately after the aim is fixed he will come 
forward with his plans and have them adopted, 
if possible as a matter of record. He will 
then have divided the responsibility for his 
completed program between himself and his 
people, and he can begin to urge the command, 
"Forward, march!" and his people will know 
where and how they are to march. 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 137 

Now for the plan of campaign. A revival? 
Yes, to be sure, but by what method? I do 
not believe I can better discuss this part of 
my subject than to tell you the method of 
my own church and how it is worked. 

Early in September the official board adopted 
as its aim a twenty-five per cent increase in 
membership to be attained by Easter Sunday. 
At the same meeting a committee of three on 
evangelistic program was appointed with the 
pastor as chairman. The pastor had his own 
plans already laid; but he 'felt that the church 
should develop its own program. A little 
later the Quarterly Conference met and con- 
firmed the objective and program which had 
been adopted by the official board. 

Before calling the Committee on Program 
together, the pastor divided the church con- 
stituency into fifteen Units, containing from 
eight to ten families each and made up about 
equally of members and non-members of the 
church. He then selected fifteen of his best 
and busiest laymen as leaders of these Units. 

When this was done the Committee on Evan- 
gelism was called together and the possibilities 
of the Unit System as an evangelistic agency 
were strongly presented. The slogan "Fifteen 



138 RURAL EVANGELISM 

revivals in this church" was suggested, and 
that fifteen men could be found to lead them 
was confidently asserted. It was urged that 
although the constituency of the church was 
small, it was large enough, if systematically and 
enthusiastically worked, to produce more than 
the twenty-five per cent increase sought. It 
was also pointed out that very soon the regular 
midweek prayer meeting could be turned over, 
at least once in two weeks, to Unit Leaders for 
reports, discussion of plans, appeals for help 
or celebrations of victory, and that the entire 
scheme could be related to the Sunday evening 
service when every leader might encourage his 
Unit to bring in their sheaves. 

The only objection raised, as the discussion 
proceeded, was that considerable time would be 
required to arrange the Units, select leaders 
and secure their consent to serve. The pastor 
then produced his loose-leaf notebook in which 
these lists had been laboriously worked out. 
An hour was spent in going over the Units, 
perfecting them, rearranging them and finally 
adopting the plan as a working organization. 
Then the list of Unit Leaders was presented 
and after some changes had been made it was 
voted to recommend the entire plan to the 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 139 

official board, where it was finally unanimously 
adopted. 

Before the plan was presented to the official 
board, however, the pastor called the proposed 
leaders to his home for an evening's conference. 
Thirteen of the fifteen were present, and not 
a man refused to take his assignment. For 
two hours the pastor conferred with these 
leaders, answering questions, allaying fears, and 
suggesting expedients. After prayer, a few 
words on the general plan, and the acceptance 
of his assignment by each leader, the pastor 
said: "Now, brothers, while you go over your 
lists and talk them over among yourselves, I 
want to take up Unit No. 1 with Brother Jones, 
its leader, and make sure we understand each 
other. Then, Brother Walker, we will take up 
your list, and so on around." 

Then Mr. Jones and the pastor together 
went over Unit No. 1. It contained nine 
families of forty-two persons, twenty church 
members and twenty-two non-members. Two 
entire families on his list were not members 
of the church and very little interested in it, 
while at least two other families in which 
some individuals were church members were 
only lukewarm in their interest. After noting 



140 RURAL EVANGELISM 

these facts the pastor said: "Now, I suggest 
that, first, you get the members of the church 
in your Unit together at your home next 
Monday evening, and I will come and meet 
with you. We will then see what can be done 
and work out a plan to get at those who are 
not members of the church." 

"But, Pastor," exclaimed Mr. Jones, in some 
consternation, "I don't know how to do this. 
You know I'm not as pious myself as I ought 
to be. How am I going to get this done? 
Why, I'm scared already." 

"That's good. I'm glad you are. It will 
do you good. But you just get those folks out 
at that meeting, and in the meantime go over 
your list carefully and pick out your surest 
prospects, and we will see what we can do at 
the meeting. Really your biggest task just 
now is to get the church members of your 
Unit out Monday night." 

By ten o'clock each leader had been dealt 
with in about the same fashion, a date fixed 
for a meeting with each Unit which the pastor 
could attend, and the leaders urged to get the 
church members out to the meeting and to 
have selected the likeliest prospects. In deal- 
ing with each leader it was pointed out that 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 141 

lie and his group ought to win a definite num- 
ber, which was named, by Easter Day. Care 
was taken to suggest such goals for each Unit 
that the entire number would be just a few 
more than the total necessary to reach the 
church objective. 

A thoughtful reader will see that this plan 
involved a clearly defined program for each 
Unit. On the evening set for the first Unit 
meeting the pastor found about half the 
church membership of the Unit present. At 
first he was disappointed, but then considered 
that if half of the church membership was 
regularly present at the Sunday evening serv- 
ice, it would be doing very well indeed; also 
that Monday evening was a difficult night to 
get people out. 

After a song was sung, Mr. Jones stated the 
object of the meeting and read the list of the 
Unit membership, indicating the names of their 
prospects for conversion and church member- 
ship. He was himself very much enthused and 
eagerly appealed to the persons present to be 
ready for the campaign just beginning. He 
spoke briefly about the victory sure to come 
if they would simply do their part in the work 
assigned them. Then the pastor added a few 



142 RURAL EVANGELISM 

words of encouragement and urged them to 
do the work of their Unit in their own way. 

In about three weeks a similar meeting was 
held with each Unit. One or two of them 
came very near being failures, while others were 
much better than the first one. Every Unit 
had decided upon a definite aim and a method 
for attaining it, and had gone to work. It had 
not been an easy period for the pastor. There 
had been a few objectors, a few pessimists, a 
few failures; but altogether he was gratified 
and greatly encouraged. 

The immediate results of this campaign did 
not fully meet the expectations of the pastor 
or his committee. They had hoped for an 
immediate increase in attendance at prayer 
meeting and Sunday evening service, and later 
for accessions into the church. The multipli- 
cation of cottage prayer meetings, however, 
tended for a few weeks to prevent any large 
increase at the regular midweek service. 

The first noticeable effect of the campaign 
was a frequent telephone request from a 
leader, or one of his helpers, for the pastor to 
call at a certain place where someone was 
anxious to see him. Soon these special calls 
consumed practically all of his time, and very 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 143 

fruitful calls they were. One evening soon 
after the campaign opened, the pastor re- 
marked to his wife, "I never knew people to 
be so ready to accept Christ, so eager to re- 
ceive help and so easily led to open confession." 
At a church social gathering at about this 
time the pastor met two couples, men and 
their wives who were strangers but who had 
heard the general invitation at the Sunday 
evening service, Within five minutes after 
meeting the first couple he found that neither 
the husband or wife had ever belonged to any 
church; that they had three small children, 
and that they had recently come to the com- 
munity. Immediately they were given a cordial 
invitation to accept Christ and come into 
church fellowship. The man looked at his 
wife, hesitated a moment and then said: 
"We had been talking about it, and we knew 
we ought to do it. Why, yes, we will come 
next Sunday evening and begin right." True 
to their word, they came and at the close of 
the sermon knelt at the altar and gave them- 
selves to Christ and were received into the 
church. During that same evening, the pastor 
also met the second couple, and two weeks 
later they came in precisely the same way, and 



144 RURAL EVNAGELISM 

since then their eldest son has also joined on 
probation. Beginning with the first Sunday 
in November, soon after the campaign was 
launched, until Easter Sunday, there were con- 
versions every Sunday evening. Some of those 
who were won had not been seen by Unit 
Leaders or their helpers, and a few the pastor 
had never heard of until they presented them- 
selves in response to the general invitation at 
the close of the sermon. The spirit of revival 
simply was in the air, was contagious, and it 
seemed to become easy for men and women 
to decide for Christ. 

When the campaign for fifteen revivals be- 
gan, there were not twenty young people, 
twelve or more years of age, in the church 
homes of the community who had not already 
given their hearts to Christ. The work of the 
Sunday school had been well done right along. 
To gain the desired twenty-five per cent in- 
crease in membership, not more than twenty- 
five could be expected for a probationers' class 
from that source. In view of this fact, it will 
not be taken as an objection on my part to 
the conversion of children when I say that 
ninety per cent of those who were won in the 
evening services were mature young people, or 



AN EVANGELISTIC PROGRAM 145 

adults, a good many of them being fathers 
and mothers. 

The campaign is now ended and its results 
known. A gross increase of thirty-one per cent, 
seventy per cent of whom came by conversion, 
was received into church fellowship. The net 
increase was greater than had been set as a 
goal. More individual workers had a part in 
the victory than could have possibly helped 
in an old-time series of special meetings, and 
the Unit Leaders were especially helped and 
encouraged by their successes. Palm Sunday 
the last probationers' class, numbering forty- 
two, besides a few who came by letter, stood 
at the altar and were received into full mem- 
bership — the largest class ever taken in at 
one service in this church. During Holy Week 
services were conducted each evening, not so 
much to secure conversions as to give the 
Unit Leaders and their coworkers opportunity 
for rejoicing over victories won. No great 
Crowds attended these meetings, but they were 
deeply spiritual and a power for good, and 
led up to a victorious service on Easter morn- 
ing, when the largest Sunday morning audi- 
ence seen in this church in twenty-five years 
was present. 



146 RURAL EVANGELISM 

Do not these results justify the insistence 
that a program with definite objectives, defi- 
nitely sought for, brings results? The aim of 
this chapter is not to urge the particular 
method employed or goal established in this 
instance as an objective to be adopted by every 
pastor or church. There are other methods, 
and other objectives may be advisable. But 
let no pastor or church fail to have some 
definite objective, and an equally definite plan 
for its attainment, for every department of 
church work. 

An evangelistic program? By all means! 
Objective? A twenty-five per cent increase in 
membership. Method? The Unit System ad- 
justed to evangelistic purpose and aiming at 
as many revivals in the church as there are 
Units, all welded into one great revival for 
the entire church. Result ? Objective attained ; 
everybody active and happy; the church doing 
its normal work in a normal way. 



CHAPTER Vin 
CHILD EVANGELISM 

Every child bom into this world has an 
earthly father and n other and a heavenly 
Father. It is no more surely related to its 
earthly father and mother than it is related 
to its heavenly Father. It derives physical 
life from its physical parents and spiritual life 
from its heavenly Parent, and is as surely 
alive spiritually as it is physically. Every 
babe is a child of God. The church is God's 
agent or representative to care for his chil- 
dren and keep them in health, to bring them 
to maturity, and guard them through life in 
the knowledge and honor of their Father. It 
is entirely correct to say that children need 
no conversion, that they are born with "eternal 
life. 55 It is, however, very unsafe and unwise 
to make such an assertion without further 
explanation. 

I shall not now attempt to deal with matters 
of theology or philosophy, but shall confine 
mvself entirely to practical suggestions con- 

147 



148 RURAL EVANGELISM 

cerning child evangelism. That the child needs 
to be evangelized when it has been born God's 
child, needs some explanation. I offer no 
apology for citing my own experience of con- 
version as affording fairly clear reasons for 
the apparent dilemma. I come of good old- 
time Presbyterian stock, which taught in my 
mother's day that children are born in sin, 
in an unredeemed state, but that if they die 
in infancy, they are saved by a special dis- 
pensation of Providence. While this is a vast 
improvement upon the doctrine that even some 
children are elected to eternal death, and that 
there are "infants in hell not a span long/' 
as I once heard a Calvinist say, it is a long 
way from the teaching of Christ that "of 
such is the kingdom of heaven/ 5 According 
to the faith of my mother's day, unredeemed 
childhood, as soon as it is able to understand, 
had to be brought to saving faith through the 
gospel, and devoted motherhood did not fail 
to accept and undertake this task. I do not 
recall when I learned to pray, nor when I first 
learned of Christ. I seem always to have 
known the story, and I was early taught its 
meaning. 

We lived in those days in a log cabin near 



CHILD EVANGELISM 149 

Montague, Texas. It was 1876, and I was 
but five years of age. Each afternoon mother 
allowed me to have a piece of bread, and if 
I asked for it, I might have molasses on it. 
Often I would forget to ask for the molasses 
and later would notice the oversight and 
remedy it in my own way. In the cellar under 
the kitchen, reached by an outside door, was 
a barrel of sorghum molasses, our year's supply. 
A metal faucet permitted easy drawing, and 
when I wanted to sweeten my bread I formed 
the habit of going to the barrel and drawing 
it for myself. One day mother discovered my 
habit and told me I must not do that any 
more. She explained that if I wanted mo- 
lasses I should ask for it, for fear that other- 
wise I might some day leave the faucet open 
and spill it on the floor. I understood perfectly 
and had no other thought than to obey. 

After some days I forgot again to ask for 
molasses until I was playing in the yard, when 
with a guilty feeling I stole into the cellar 
and drew it. Sure enough, in my guilty nervous 
haste I let the faucet slip too widely open 
and spilled about half a pint on the floor. 
It was a dirt floor, and I tried to conceal the 
evidence of my disobedience with dirt. Think- 



150 RURAL EVANGELISM 

ing I had accomplished my purpose, I went 
on about my play. Later in the afternoon 
mother discovered what I had done, and 
called me in. She sat sewing or knitting, and 
had a small box near her feet, and she told 
me to come and sit there, for she wanted to 
tell me a story. How I loved mother's stories! 
particularly those out of the Bible! At first 
I did not think of the molasses at all. That 
had gone entirely out of my mind. She began 
by telling me what sin is, what it does, what 
God thinks of it, how it ruins us and prevents 
us from being his children any more. She told 
it so vividly that I began to realize that sin 
is the very worst thing in the world. Then I 
thought of the molasses. There seemed to 
be a river of it and every one, but particularly 
God, could see it. Mother talked about 
heaven and the "bad place," and how awful 
it is to sin and make God sorry, and to be 
outside God's family. 

I do not know how she managed to do it, 
holding the theology of that day, but I know 
the thing which most deeply concerned me 
then was that I had been God's little boy until 
I drew that molasses, and that then I was not 
his little boy any more. I do not recall think- 



CHILD EVANGELISM 151 

ing about the devil, or hell, or of being lost. 
I simply wanted to be God's little boy. I 
can imagine from the way I felt how I looked. 
Despair was in my heart, utter black despair. 
I asked mother, and I remember how my 
voice startled me, "W-w-will just one sin make 
me be God's little boy no more, mother — 
just one sin?" Her voice was very quiet and 
sad as she replied, "Yes, just one sin will do it. 1 ' 

I think, wise woman that she was, that she 
saw my despair, and she immediately began 
telling me about Jesus, of his love for us, and 
how his death washes our sins away, and 
makes us God's children again when we have 
sinned but are truly sorry and promise never 
to sin any more. She made a beautiful story 
of it, and her voice was to me like music the 
angels must make before God's throne. At 
first I could hardly listen for despair. Then 
I began to see hope, and I got up from the 
box and came and stood right before her, and 
when she finally ended with a smile and looked 
into my eyes, I was crying and smiling at the 
same time. She asked, "Was that a good 
story, son?" and I replied, 

"The best you ever told." 

"Well, you may run along and play again 



152 RURAL EVANGELISM 

now/' she said, and I went out into the yard. 
She had not mentioned the molasses, but 
from that day until this I have not poured 
molasses or syrup without recalling that day 
and my conversion. I did not know it was 
conversion then, nor did my mother know it. 
She was simply trying to make her boy under- 
stand the danger of sin. I do not believe she 
thought I had sinned, I was so young! 

Years passed and when I was ten years old 
I went to the old time "mourners' bench" in 
a "tabernacle meeting," professed conversion 
and joined the church. More years passed 
and I was sixteen years of age when at another 
revival I heard a good man whom I honored, 
a Methodist minister, say, "You must be able 
to point to the time and place of your con- 
version, and to describe it, or you are not 
saved." 

He had just described his own wonderful 
experience of conversion and I began contrast- 
ing it with my own. I knew the time and 
place where I had professed conversion but 
how about the experience? I sat aghast! I 
was convinced all at once that I was utterly 
lost and without hope. The call for penitents 
came, and I hurried again to the "mourners' 



CHILD EVANGELISM 153 

bench" and tried to mourn, but without 
success. At home next morning I told mother 
what had happened. She comforted me, but 
felt that I ought to go on until I "became 
satisfied/ 5 But the meeting closed without 
giving me relief. During the next two years 
at almost every opportunity I went forward 
to the anxious seat, and was all the time in 
secret an earnest seeker after a Christian 
experience. I wanted to be converted. 

Then I went away to college. Before my 
arrival I worried a good deal over the ques- 
tion as to whether I should take my stand as 
a Christian, or be reckoned among the unsaved 
in the college. A revival was to begin two 
weeks after college opened and I had to take 
sides. To be counted among the unsaved 
seemed to be proper, but was utterly repellent 
to me. I wanted to be with those who would 
work to save others, but I dared not be a 
hypocrite. On the Saturday before the meet- 
ing began I spent the entire day in the woods 
alone. It was my day of great battle! Had 
my soul been large enough and a Milton 
present, there would have been a theme for 
another epic. 

Toward night I grew calm, and certain 



154 RURAL EVANGELISM 

decisions were slowly made, and I whispered 
them over: "I have done everything I have 
been told to do, everything I know how to do. 
If I know my own heart, there is nothing I 
have neglected. I may be lost; may be one 
of those who are not ordained to be saved; but 
I want to be reckoned among Christian people, 
to live a Christian life and to help others to 
be saved. I'll go on and say I am a Christian, 
do my best to live like one, work like one, 
pray and serve God as nearly as I can as a 
Christian should, and if I die at last and am 
lost I can't help it." I arose to my feet and 
like a flash from the skies, there swept through 
my memory that day when I had drawn the 
mo asses and mother told me what sin is. 
For a moment I was stupefied with the joy of 
it. Then I began to hurry toward the college, 
and at twilight met one of the professors and 
said to him, with a thrill of voice and heart, 
"I was converted when I was five years old 
at my mother's knee." He was startled, 
seemed uncertain what to reply, and I hurried 
on to my room. 

Now, what had happened to me at five 
years of age, and again at eighteen when the 
memory of that early event returned to me? 



CHILD EVANGELISM 155 

Was I converted in the sense that I had re- 
ceived something which I had not possessed 
before, a quality of life, an endowment of grace? 
Was I regenerated, born again, in the same 
sense that a Bowery bum is regenerated when 
he repents in the Jerry McAuley mission? 

If I was born the Lord's child, before I could 
cease to be his I must "backslide/ 5 Had I 
done that? Not consciously and intentionally! 
What was the nature of the remorse I felt 
while mother told me of the meaning and effect 
of sin? Was that genuine repentance, a sense 
of moral degradation such as wicked sinners 
must feel when they repent? I think not. 
It was horror at the idea of going on in life 
without God, my Father, rather than any 
fear of punishment or regret for the failure 
of my own character. There is no doubt that 
something happened to me, something definite 
and decisive. What was it? 

My own opinion of what took place at that 
time may best be set forth by describing an 
event which happened in my own home at 
Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in 1901, when my 
daughter was just six years of age. One day 
she had been guilty of some misdemeanor for 
which her mother had reproved her, and told 



156 RURAL EVANGELISM 

her she must do no more. The child was 
offended, not at the reproof, but at the com- 
mand to do the thing no more. After a few 
moments of sulky silence she said, poutingly, 
"If I was Mrs. Miller's little girl, she would 
let me do it." 

Scarcely thinking what the child meant, her 
mother said, "Well, I guess you had better go 
and be Mrs. Miller's little girl then." 

Without a moment's hesitation the child 
said, "All right, I will," and went immediately 
about packing up her things to go. The 
Miller family lived in the next block and were 
our very dear friends. My study was at the 
back of the house, and soon Mrs. Wagner 
came and told me what had happened, and 
said, "She's packing up, but I guess she'll 
get tired of it and quit pretty soon." She 
looked worried, however, as she went back to 
the sitting room; and in half an hour came 
back exclaiming "The child is all packed up, 
clothes, playthings, everything, and is actually 
going. What in the world shall I do?" 

Now, of course, having given her consent 
for Alta to go, her mother could not change. 
Any way, what was needed was that Alta, 
not her mother, should change. We went back 



CHILD EVANGELISM 157 

to the sitting room together. Alta had on her 
hat, and her bags and boxes were ready to send, 
and she was smilingly waiting to say good-by. 
More to spar for time than anything else, I 
squatted on the floor beside her, fumbling with 
her satchel to see that it was properly fastened, 
and said: "So you are going to leave us, Alta? 
Mother and I are awfully sorry. We thought 
we had a little girl for always, and now we 
will have none, and your little brothers will 
have no sister. Will you come to see us some- 
times?" 

I think my voice shook a little, and a queer 
look came into Alta's eyes, and then she looked 
at her mother and saw tears running down 
her cheeks, and with a smothered cry she 
threw off her hat and sobbed, "I don't want 
to be Mrs. Miller's little girl! I want to be 
mamma's and papa's little girl." Of course 
there was glad making up and then unpacking, 
and we "lived happily ever after." 

But what happened to Alta that day? She 
did not become her parents' child. She had 
been theirs all along. She had not been defi- 
nitely aware until that morning of the fact 
that she preferred her mother above all other 
mothers. That she was her mother she had 



158 RURAL EVANGELISM 

accepted as a fact with which she had nothing 
to do and to which she gave no thought. But 
that morning she had opportunity to choose 
which one in all the world she wanted for her 
mother, and she chose her own mother. That 
did not change the mother's relationship to 
the child, but it did change the child's rela- 
tionship to her mother. After that she was 
her mother's both by relationship and by her 
own election, her own choice. She had faced 
the opportunity to choose and had chosen 
her mother. There had been a bit of unpleas- 
antness, not on her mother's part but on 
Alta's part, and she had almost chosen another 
woman as mother, and in a child's way suf- 
fered remorse when she realized that, after all, 
she did not want any other mother. 

I think that is what happened to me back 
there at Montague, Texas. I came to the 
place where I could choose another spiritual 
master than my Father. I could choose self, 
or any one of a number of masters, and I 
began to do it. But my mother told me that 
if I should do that, my heavenly Father would 
be sad, and I could not be his little boy any 
more, so I just then and there elected him as 
my Father. That did not in the least change 



CHILD EVANGELISM 159 

his attitude or relationship to me; but it did 
change my attitude toward him. After that 
I was conscious that he was my Father by 
my own election. It was a matter of my own 
will. The day I joined my will to his I be- 
longed to him. As to what change divine 
grace may have wrought in me at that mo- 
ment, I will let the philosophers answer. 
What I know and urge is that it is the business 
of ministers, Sunday schools, Christian fathers 
and mothers, and the church to bring children 
at as early an age as possible to elect God as 
their Father, and he can be trusted to do for 
them whatever they need. 

By what method can this voluntary choice 
be brought about? The crown of motherhood 
is not simply to bear children, but to "bring 
them up in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord, 55 to teach them to honor their earthly 
parents and love their heavenly Father. What- 
ever pastors, Sunday school, or church may 
do for childhood, it should not be necessary 
for them to lead children to choose God as 
Father. That should be the highest privilege 
of the father and mother. The supreme 
service a pastor can render to childhood is to 
teach mothers how to bring their own children 



160 RURAL EVANGELISM 

to Christ. But when the fathers and mothers 
fail, as they do fail, then the pastor and the 
church must not fail. Then is the church's 
great opportunity. 

The pastor's part in this great work is to 
know the children, the little ones as well as 
those who are older. If he has a good memory 
he should know them all by name, but he 
must at least know their faces and recognize 
them when he meets them on the street. And 
it is important that the children know him. 
Of course they will always know his name 
and that he is the preacher in their church; 
but they must know him better than that. 
They must know that he loves them, and that 
he is the warm-hearted friend of every one 
of them. He must also teach them. His 
probationers' class should not be an ordeal 
but a delight to every child in it. They should 
delight to have him talk to them, and they 
will if they know he cares for them, and they 
will be proud to say that they are in the pas- 
tor's class. 

The teachers in the Primary and Junior 
Departments occupy the most important posi- 
tions in the Sunday school. Some time be- 
tween the ages when children enter the Primary 



CHILD EVANGELISM 161 

and leave the Junior Department, they are 
going to make their choice of God as their 
Father, or elect something else to the mastery 
of their lives. It is not unimportant to re- 
claim wandering children of God and restore 
them to the Father's house and love; but it 
is even more important to prevent his little 
ones from going astray. It is the high priv- 
ilege of primary and junior Sunday school 
teachers to guide those children aright whose 
parents fail to do their duty. Whatever else 
he neglects or for lack of time fails to do, the 
pastor should not fail to see that these teachers 
are of the right kind and qualification. Too 
often the Primary Department is considered a 
teacher training class, where young girls who 
have the will to serve are sent to learn how 
to teach, on the theory that in the Primary 
Department pleasant stories and kindly dis- 
positions are all that are needed. Young 
mothers who are dealing faithfully with their 
own children, and have fresh in their minds 
the methods and spirit which win them to 
acceptance of their heavenly Father, will do 
best in these Departments, although anyone 
who has the mother love and the evangelistic 
vision, with some common sense, may become 



162 RURAL EVANGELISM 

efficient here. When some teacher, after a 
few years of experience, reveals particular abil- 
ity in such work, see that she remains there. 

However wisely parents may do their duty 
by the religious life of their children, or Sun- 
day school teachers may do theirs, a time 
must come when the child shall choose for 
himself. I like to think of life as a highway, 
leading very plainly forward for the child until 
the day when he comes to a fork in the road. 
One of these roads stretching ahead leads to 
pleasure and indulgence, away from God's 
highway which turns more steeply up the 
hills and leads to service. Left to himself, any 
child will select the road that seems easier 
and promises more pleasure. Up to this time 
he has been traveling the normal road of 
childhood. But now he must choose for him- 
self one or the other of diverging ways. It 
was there that I stood at that moment after 
I had drawn the molasses. It is there that 
every mother some day stands with her child. 
It is safely past that point that every teacher 
of primary or junior classes must seek to 
bring her pupils. It is not enough that during 
these years proper teaching and persuasiveness 
should be brought to bear upon the child. 



CHILD EVANGELISM 163 

He must be led to declare his choice. It is 
"with the mouth confession is made unto sal- 
vation/ 5 My mother's failure to recognize 
that fact and to lead me to a declaration at 
that moment left open for me the wilderness 
in which I wandered for thirteen years, and in 
which I might easily have lost my way. How 
blind are some pastors and many parents at 
this point ! 

How old ought a child to be to join the 
church? Just old enough to choose God as 
his Father. Last Sunday I preached to children. 
It was a simple sermon, explaining to them 
this matter of choosing God as Father. A 
five-year-old youngster sat between his parents 
just in front of me. How his eyes sparkled 
and snapped at times, and how his face lighted 
up with real spiritual vision, as he, in his 
childish way, chose God to be his own Father! 
I could gladly take such a child into the church. 
Understand? Certainly he does not under- 
stand doctrines, the battles which are before 
him, the temptations of life in maturity. But 
who does understand them? Who has fore- 
sight? Not I. But the child may understand 
that he chooses God, as revealed in Jesus 
Christ, to be his Father and the ruler of his 



164 RURAL EVANGELISM 

life and that he trusts him and loves him. 
What more can an adult do? The only thing 
such a child lacks is open confession and 
acknowledgment of his choice. Therefore the 
Sunday school should hold at least once a year 
<a Decision Day service, in which the children 
may openly confess their faith and declare 
their choice of God and the Christian life. 

The method of this Decision Day is not 
important, except that the teacher must have 
a place in it, and the confession should be 
made openly. It is my custom to have the 
entire Sunday school attend preaching service 
on that day, to preach a simple sermon giving 
an invitation to the children to come to the 
church altar with their teachers, and by so 
doing to declare their purpose to accept Christ. 
This, of course, must be followed by the pro- 
bationers 5 class, where the pastor himself will 
lead the children in the practice of prayer and 
testimony, and will teach them the meaning 
of church membership and the Christian life. 
The final and climactic event will be the day 
of their reception into full church membership. 

I have departed slightly in this chapter 
from my purpose to discuss only practical 
methods and not ideals and doctrines. I do 



CHILD EVANGELISM 165 

not want another man to tell me how to deal 
with the children of my church. My love for 
them must find its own way. But I do not 
want young pastors to pass through the Slough 
of Despond which was mine for ten years 
while I thought my way through on the ques- 
tion, "Must a child be converted, and at 
what age should he be brought into church 
fellowship ?" Some of the grounds upon which 
I have reached conclusions satisfactory to my- 
self have been here set forth. I believe a 
child does not require the same kind of con- 
version as an adult, but that for himself every 
child must make his choice and by an act of 
his own will set himself apart as God's own. 
This act of the child does not change God's 
attitude toward him, but changes the child's 
attitude toward God. This decision should 
be made and acknowledged and declared as 
early as the child is able to choose for himself. 
Some children will do it very early. I did it 
at five years of age and I know others who 
have done it even younger. On the other 
hand, I have known children at twelve who 
had not done it. Parents, teachers and pas- 
tors will find here an opportunity for using 
Godly judgment. 



CHAPTER IX 
CONSERVATION 

It is said that Methodists "believe in back- 
sliding. 5 ' It would almost appear that the 
slander is true from the way many converts 
of revivals and other campaigns are too often 
left to "sink or swim" without help or seeming 
care from pastor or church. We do not "be- 
lieve in backsliding," though we recognize that 
it is possible, even is likely to occur, and 
should fortify against it at every point. 

I was sent occasionally, when a lad, to at- 
tend "round-ups" on the ranges of western 
Texas. The great cattle-kings would gather 
all the cattle for miles around, their own and 
other people's, unless the few farmers should 
keep their own small herds safely fenced in 
on that day and the day preceding. Even 
then some "strays" or some fence breakers 
would be in the "round-up," and the owners 
must look after them or they would be driven 
out of the country. The vast herd, numbering 
tens of thousands, would be gathered at a 

166 



CONSERVATION 167 

convenient place in a valley and corralled on 
every side. Each owner would select a con- 
venient spot, place herders there, and then 
send in cowboys to "cut out" his brand and 
drive each animal to his own herd, where it 
would be held. The small farmers would be 
present, each of them owning a private brand, 
and they would select a place where as a 
company they could hold their cattle. While 
a few of them attempted to herd their cattle, 
others went into the herd to "cut out" and 
drive their small holdings to this place of 
safety. 

Two things were necessary for success in 
this task: there must be keen-eyed and skill- 
ful horsemen who would quickly recognize a 
brand, and have skill to "cut out" the animal 
bearing it and drive it to the proper herd. 
Then the herders must see to it that no ani- 
mal once "cut out" should stray away again 
to some other herd. To permit that would 
make the efforts of "cutting out" of no value. 
Revivalists have been good hands at "cutting 
out," but how about the herders? It is not 
enough to secure conversions; we must save 
such as are converted. 

To call the work of winning converts "herd- 



168 RURAL EVANGELISM 

ing" is a poor figure. Men cannot be herded 
into the kingdom of heaven; they must choose 
the kingdom of their own free will and remain 
in it of their own volition. However, the 
question of conservation of evangelistic effort 
is clearly before us, and we must face it. 

Herbert Hoover has been pleading for greater 
production while some extreme social agitators 
are insisting that three hours' work a day, 
three days in the week, is sufficient to provide 
the world with all material goods necessary 
for its comfort. Mr. Hoover says the world 
needs increased production, and common sense 
urges that what the world needs is not less 
but more work. Work is not a calamity but 
a blessing. It is "three generations from shirt 
sleeves to shirt sleeves," some one has said. 
"Shirt sleeves" come the second time because 
the middle generation is denied the blessing 
of labor. One secret of strong physical, mental, 
and moral fiber is labor. 

The world needs moral and spiritual help, 
character production, and this comes only 
through labor of heart and head as well as 
body. Not a trip to heaven "on flowery beds 
of ease" is the promise of religion; but "Go ye 
and disciple all nations" is its command, and 



CONSERVATION 169 

that requires work. Too long, however, work 
has been urged for the world's sake, without 
sufficient emphasis on the virtue in it for the 
worker. It is not enough for a man to produce 
his share of the world's goods, or to do a meager 
share toward saving the world, if he is able 
to do more. Every man for his own sake 
must work to the limit of his ability. Labor 
is not a calamity; it is a blessing, and they 
are rich who have plenty to do and the will 
to do it. 

Then to save their converts a pastor and 
his church will put them to work. Without 
adding to present machinery, let us notice 
what a variety of opportunities the church 
affords for Christian service. First, there are 
the women's Missionary Societies, two of them 
and each of them worthy. Their dues are 
not large, though opportunities for large giving 
are not lacking, and the field for work is almost 
boundless. Every woman in the church should 
belong to one if not both of these, and the 
pastor will do his best to encourage such 
membership. Have no fear, timid soul! The 
trouble with the church is not "money, money, 
money, 9 ' or "work, work, work," as some 
would have us believe. The trouble is rather 



170 RURAL EVANGELISM 

spiritual idleness, laziness, stinginess! Get a 
missionary society organized, and thank God 
for the chance to put some of your people to 
work in it, and for the opportunity to get 
their hearts stirred by the messages they hear. 

Then there is the Ladies' Aid Society. Yes, 
by all means there ought to be such a society, 
and it ought to have every woman in the 
church in its membership. If the spirit of 
Christ is in its members, it will prove a potent 
factor for democracy in the social life of the 
church and will afford an opportunity for some 
to work who might not have talent for other 
forms of church work. Remember, I am speaking 
especially now of the value of the work to the 
worker. The Ladies' Aid Society will furnish 
work at which some of its members may com- 
plain, because they have no vision of its ulti- 
mate purposes, but if they do the work they 
will receive help whether they have the vision 
or not. 

And there is the Men's Club, or Brother- 
hood, or Class. I confess that I prefer the 
last term. A Brotherhood, or Club suggests a 
purely social organization, while the term 
"Class" indicates other purposes than mere 
entertainment. Every man in the church 



CONSERVATION 171 

should be a member of the Class, and it should 
be organized for study, as well as for sociabil- 
ity. It should cooperate with the Ladies' Aid 
Society, on occasion should entertain that 
Society and the church, and should keep an 
eye on the church property. Its social com- 
mittee should be on the lookout for strangers, 
transients, and outsiders, and help make the 
Class a real evangelistic agency. 

Then there is the Epworth League for the 
young people. God grant it may really be 
for the young people. In some churches, 
where there are organized classes for young 
people in the Sunday school, there may be 
less demand for the League, but in the or- 
dinary church there is still a place for it, and 
every young person of teen age in the church, 
at least those above fourteen, should be in 
its membership and find work there. 

Sunday school classes, except in the Adult 
Department, should be small, not more than 
six or seven to a class, and five would be better. 
Providing these classes with teachers opens 
up a field for a large number of workers. Of 
course this is not work for new converts, but 
they may be trained for it and encouraged to 
serve in that capacity, as well as in other 



172 RURAL EVANGELISM 

official positions in the Sunday school. Every 
class in the school should be organized with 
the proper officers. By this means half the 
children and young people above the Primary 
Department will continually be in official 
position of some sort, and if tenure of office 
is not long, all of them in the course of the 
year will have some experience in leadership. 

To keep class organizations alive and active, 
every class should have some aim, some ob- 
jective toward which it strives and for which 
it works. This may be the raising of mis- 
sionary money; the support of an orphan; 
missionary work in the community by which 
new members are to be brought into the school; 
some service to the pastor, such as distributing 
handbills, messages, etc.; or carrying flowers to 
the sick and shut-ins. The character of the 
community will determine the nature of the 
activity, but there should be work of some 
sort. A dead church is a church without work, 
and it is dead because it tried to exist in idle- 
ness. The theory that one must work only 
enough to produce what he himself needs will 
not harmonize with Christ's spirit, nor will 
it save the world or a single soul. And the 
regularly organized activities of the church 



CONSERVATION 173 

afford ample opportunities for giving most of 
the people abundant work to do. 

Then there is the Unit System. Thank 
God that John Wesley gave it to us, and that 
we have had sense enough to return to it. 
Units must not be too large. Eight families 
will be enough and six might be better. One 
should be the leader with a will to see to it 
that every member of his Unit who is a church 
member has something to do. If there are 
twelve members of the church in the Unit, 
one may be an officer in a missionary society, 
two may be teachers in the Sunday school, 
one an Epworth League officer, and all vari- 
ously but actively at work. So far as he can 
avoid it, a Unit Leader will not add to the 
labors of those who are already occupied, but 
having made a list of such as are not at work, 
he will study how, beginning with small tasks, 
such as helping to get others out to some 
committee meeting, finally to lead them to 
some steady employment. One member of the 
Unit should keep a record of Unit attendance 
at morning worship, while another could keep 
a record for the evening service. They should 
make monthly reports to the Leader, and 
with him and other helpers devise means for 



174 RURAL EVANGELISM 

improving the Unit record in church attend- 
ance. 

One Unit member could be the Sunday 
school representative in that Unit, keep in 
touch with the members of the group and 
report prospective teachers, or absentees, and 
help, if possible, to get the latter back, and 
in various ways help both the Unit and the 
school. Other Unit members can attend to 
the interests of the prayer meeting, Epworth 
League, the circulation of the church paper, 
while others may assist the Cradle Roll Superin- 
tendent, Home Department Superintendent, or 
those who desire helpers in connection with 
the church budget and the benevolences. In 
this way it should be possible to put every 
church member in each Unit immediately to 
work, giving him responsibility and thus 
arousing his interest and conserving him for 
the church, as well as getting work done which 
makes genuine contribution to the progress of 
the Kingdom. If such work as has been 
suggested is not sufficient, there is always the 
work of evangelism, the effort to win converts, 
and each Unit has a field for such activity 
where consecrated endeavor saves the lost 
and saves the church as well. 



CONSERVATION 175 

No pastor could or should attempt to manage 
such an organization as I have suggested, except 
through genuine Unit Leaders. Reports to him 
should be made by Leaders only. All other 
workers in the Units should report and be 
responsible to their Leader. This will not 
give anyone an impossible task. I have found 
the busiest men in my church willing to accept 
the leadership of these Units. None of them, 
perhaps, has done perfectly the work possible 
in such a responsible position, but all of them 
have done some part of it effectively, and the 
fruitage of their labor is visible through all 
the church life and activities. 

Finally, let every convert be associated 
with some reliable Christian man or woman 
for friendly counsel, guidance and help. For 
children, let their Sunday school teachers be 
such counselors; for youth, let older men and 
women as well as Sunday school teachers be 
appointed; and for adults, let the pastor sug- 
gest to some neighbor or friend of the convert 
that he is placing on him or her the respon- 
sibility for keeping up that convert's enthusi- 
asm and activity. The pastor himself will call 
more often on new converts than on other 
people, but will never call without having 



176 RURAL EVANGELISM 

some definite purpose in view. He will have 
a bit of information to bring them, a book 
for them to read, or he will want them to 
help win some one for Christ, or do some 
special work in the church. It is definiteness 
of aim in such calls that makes them at all 
effective. Get your head and your heart to 
work on this great problem, brothers, and 
you will find a way to hold the children. 

Infant mortality is being steadily lowered. 
It is being done not by sentimental but by 
scientific methods. New converts are infants 
in the church and mortality among them will 
be lowered by the same zeal and patience and 
common sense which, in the last analysis, 
mark the scientific method. The heart may 
furnish fire and enthusiasm for the task — it 
must do that if there is to be any power for 
it — but the mind, with cool and passionless 
reasoning, must find the method for its accom- 
plishment. Head and heart go well together. 

For community programs, social activities, 
clubs and parish house plans, I commend you 
to the lectures and books of experts along 
those lines, and urge that you think of them 
as definite methods, by conserving its fruits, 
for completing the work of evangelism. 



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